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Getting Started with your Feedback Portal and Configuring Portal Settings
Getting Started with your Feedback Portal and Configuring Portal Settings
Jon avatar
Written by Jon
Updated over a month ago

The Feedback Portal gathers user ideas and feature requests into a single, user-friendly location. It helps you build with user needs in mind, enhances communication and transparency, and reduces support burden and churn.

You can analyze, prioritize, and showcase feedback and progress on a public roadmap. Customize the Portal with your branding, integrate with existing tools, and maximize value for both users and your business.


Activate your Feedback portal

On the Project Overview page, select 'Feedback Portal' and click 'Activate' to get started.


Configure your Feedback portal

From your Portal, Select 'Portal Settings' from the top right menu and tab across the different options to adjust your settings.


General Settings

Configure your general settings, including the portal's name, URL, feature requests, roadmap, moderation, or delete the portal if necessary.

  • Portal URL: Your unique portal URL - By default, the portal URL will be the project name. You can edit the Portal URL at any time.

  • Portal name: The name of your portal, also displayed in the window/tab name

  • Feature Requests: Enable or disable the ability for users to add new and vote on existing ideas

  • Roadmap: Enable or disable the roadmap feature within the portal

  • Moderation: Allows you to decide whether or not new ideas submitted via the Feedback Portal or Widget are automatically made public

  • Danger Zone: If you no longer need your Feedback Portal you can delete it here.


Status Settings

Status and Category settings let you customize which statuses and feedback categories are visible on your Feedback Portal, allowing you to exclude internal team categories.

  • Public status: This is a way for you to simplify your internal Userback status workflow onto your public roadmap by assigning multiple internal statuses to a single public status.

  • Categories: Can be enabled/disabled from the public view.

⚠️ Warning: If you change the status of feedback within Userback it will change the status within the Feedback Portal, dependent on how you have them allocated.


Branding Settings

Customize the Portal's colors and logo to align with your brand for a cohesive, professional look. Add a logo and favicon, adjust the theme color, or remove the 'Powered by Userback' banner.


Single Sign-On (SSO) Settings

Single Sign-On (SSO) streamlines user access across systems by using JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for authentication. To implement SSO with the Userback Feedback Portal, generate an SSO token in your Portal Settings using your private key. Then, redirect users from your app or website to the Feedback Portal with the SSO token included.

How to enable SSO with the Feedback Portal

1. Access Userback Portal Settings and Copy the Private Key

Navigate to your Portal Settings, and select the Single Sign-On tab. From there, copy your private key (keep this one a secret).

2. Generate SSO Token with JWT Library

Use a JWT library on your server side to generate an SSO token using the private key you copied in step 1. The SSO token contains the user's email, name, and avatar URL. Additional user information can be added. Here's an example using Node.js:

const jwt = require('jsonwebtoken');// Replace YOUR_PRIVATE_SSO_KEY with your actual private keyconst private_key = 'YOUR_PRIVATE_SSO_KEY';// Replace the placeholder values with actual user informationconst sso_token = jwt.sign({ email: 'user@example.com', name: 'John Doe', avatar_url: 'https://www.example.com/avatar.jpg'}, private_key, { algorithm: 'HS256'});

3. Add SSO Token and Redirect Users to the Feedback Portal URL

Add the SSO token generated in step 2 to your feedback portal URL, and redirect your users to the URL with the SSO token included. This will automatically log them in using SSO. Here's an example using JavaScript:

// construct the URL for the feedback portal with the SSO tokenconst portal_url = 'https://mycompany.ideas.userback.io/p/nMeOGChr32?sso_jwt=' + sso_token;// redirect the user to the feedback portalwindow.location.href = portal_url;

4. Optional: Hide the Feedback Portal from Anonymous Users

Configure your portal settings to require SSO authentication if you want to hide the feedback portal from anonymous users and only allow users authenticated by SSO to access it.

Once you've completed the steps above, make sure to verify and test the SSO implementation before directing your users to the Feedback Portal. If you have any questions or need assistance, our friendly support team is always ready to help.

How to enforce SSO

Concerned about anonymous feedback confidentiality? Use Single Sign-On (SSO) to restrict portal access to authenticated users only. Anonymous users will see a customizable "Private" screen with a message and login links.

  1. Make sure you have configured SSO for your Userback project. Check out our guide on how to enable Single Sign-On (SSO) with the Feedback Portal.

  2. Enable the "Enforce SSO" toggle which is found in your Portal Settings directly below the Private Key.

  3. Customize the message that anonymous users see when they try to access the feedback portal. You can do this by adding a title to Line 1 and a text/description with links on Line 2. To add links, use the following format: [text](url).

    Here's an example that you can copy and paste:

    Welcome to our Private Feedback Portal 🔒Only authenticated users have access. [Login or Register](https://app.yourapp.com)

That's it! Now only authenticated users will have access to your Userback Feedback Portal, ensuring the confidentiality and security of your feedback.


Translation Settings

Customize the idea form to align with your brand’s tone and terminology, or adjust the language entirely to match your company’s style.


Import Settings

You can easily import your Feature Requests to the Feedback Portal from CSV spreadsheet files, allowing you to bring feedback from other platforms and making setup a breeze.

To get started with the import, we recommend reviewing our "getting ready for import" section to understand what can be imported.

Getting yourself ready for an import

Before you import, we would recommend starting with just 5 records and ensuring that you are happy with the result before importing 100+ feedback at once.


Some spreadsheet formatting tips:

  • Date format – We support 3 different date formats yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss , yyyy-mm-dd and mm/dd/yyyy please make sure your dates look like this before uploading your CSV.

  • Spreadsheet size limit – There is a limit of 4000 rows per import (1000 for trial accounts), this means if you have a total of 6500 rows we'd recommend splitting them into 2 separate files and importing that way.

Not sure how to format your spreadsheet or want to get some practice with sample data? Contact us directly, we're happy to help!

How to import Feature Requests using a CSV

  1. Navigate to your Portal settings, click the 'Import' Tab and select ' Import from CSV

  2. Upload
    Select a .csv file to upload, or drag and drop your CSV file into the designated square at the center of the page.

  3. Mapping & Preview
    Use the drop-down boxes at the top of each column to match each data type to Userback's data structure. The auto-recognition feature will automatically match the column headers to the fields in Userback. For any unrecognized headers, manually select the appropriate fields.

  4. Finish
    Click the "Import X feature requests" button at the top. Confirm the prompt to finish your import.

What data can be imported

🚩 This is a required field and cannot be skipped or ignored.

Available on Company, Scale, and Premium Plans


Frequently Asked Questions

How many Feedback Portals can I have?

You can now have five Feedback Portals, if you require more, please speak with our Customer Service Team at support@userback.io.

Why can't I toggle off the 'Powered by Userback' within the Branding Section?

You need to be on the Premium Plan to enable this function.

Q: What is SSO?

A: Single Sign-On (SSO) is a way to provide a seamless experience for your users when they access different systems or applications that require authentication.

Q: What is a JSON Web Token (JWT)?

A: JSON Web Tokens (JWT) is a standard for securely transmitting information between parties as a JSON object. Read More about JWT and how it works here.

Q: Can I hide the feedback portal from anonymous users and only allow users authenticated by SSO to access it?

A: Yes, you can hide the feedback portal from anonymous users and only allow users authenticated by SSO to access it. See How to enforce SSO for more details.

Q: Are feedback portal profiles the same as Userback user accounts?

A: No, feedback portal profiles are not the same as Userback user accounts. The portal profiles are created and managed separately from Userback user accounts.

Q: Can I skip columns to be ignored from the import?

A: Yes, choose the Skip option for columns you'd like us to ignore.

Q: What if some of my data is wrong or fails to import?

A: Don't worry, we'll import the correctly formatted data and provide a download link for the ones that were skipped. Check out the date format section above as this is the most common skip reason.

Userback upload complete

Q: Are system fields created when importing data?

A: No, head to Categories or Statuses and make sure they exist before importing your data. If there is no Status or Category provided, we'll ignore the category and set the Status to Open.

Q: Can I roll back or delete an import?

A: To delete imported feedback, open the Feedback page. Filter your feedback by Source: CSV Upload and use the Select all toggle to bulk select and delete CSV imported feedback.

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