Generating a Login Link for a Customer User
A login link is a one-time web address that signs a specific customer user into your portal without a password. You generate it from your portal admin and hand it to that user, and they're in.
It exists for one situation: a customer user needs to get into your portal right now, and the normal ways of getting them in aren't working. It is a rescue tool, not a routine one. This article explains when it's the right call, when it isn't, and what to use instead.
Why this feature exists
Almost every way a user gets into your portal depends on email working:
- Account invitations
- Password reset messages
- One-time passcodes (OTP) at login
When your portal's email delivery isn't set up correctly, all three of those quietly fail. The user requests a reset, nothing arrives, and they contact you. From their side it looks like the portal is broken.
The login link lets you get that person into their account immediately, while the underlying email problem gets sorted out separately.
That last part matters. If you find yourself generating login links regularly, the links aren't the solution — they're a symptom. Your portal's email delivery needs attention. See Email Setup (Article 26) for how to validate your sending domain. Fixing that once removes the need for this feature almost entirely.
When a login link is the right choice
These are the cases it was built for:
The user is with you right now. You're on the phone, on a video call, or in a chat session with them. You generate the link, they click it while you're both there, and you can confirm it worked. This is the single best use of the feature.
You're walking a customer through the portal. During onboarding or a training call, you need their own account open in front of them, not a demo account.
Their email address on file is wrong or dead. You've confirmed who they are by other means, and you need them in so the address can be corrected. Send the link through whatever channel you're already talking on.
Email delivery is confirmed broken and can't be fixed in the moment. A customer is blocked, it's urgent, and the DNS or SMTP fix is going to take longer than they can wait.
The thread running through all of these: you know who you're talking to, and they are ready to use the link immediately.
When to use something else instead
Routine "I can't log in" tickets. If this is happening often, the problem is email delivery. Fix that instead — you'll stop getting the tickets.
Anything asynchronous. Emailing the link and hoping they get to it later will not work. The link expires in 15 minutes.
When you haven't confirmed who you're talking to. A login link is full access to that user's account. Verify identity first, exactly as you would before resetting a password.
Giving one user's link to a different person. Links are tied to one specific user. If a colleague at the same company needs access, add them as their own user on the Users tab — don't pass someone else's link around.
When the person has no account yet. A login link can only be generated for an existing portal user. Add the user first.
How to generate one
You can start from any of these places:
- The Generate login link button on a customer's row in the customer list
- The same button in the toolbar when you have a customer open
- Generate Login Link in the menu on a customer name chip
- The row menu on the Users tab of an open customer — this one preselects that user
Then:
- Choose the user. The dropdown lists that customer's actual portal users with their email addresses. The account's primary user is marked. Suspended users are shown but can't be selected — unsuspend them first if they need access.
- Click Generate link. The link appears immediately, along with its expiry time.
- Click Copy, and send it to the user through whatever channel you're already using with them.
- Stay with them until they're in. If the link expires before they click it, just generate another one.
What the link does and doesn't do
|
|
|
|---|---|
| How long it lasts | 15 minutes from the moment you generate it |
| How many times it works | One session. It is not a reusable password. |
| Does it remember the browser? | No. Unlike links the portal emails, this one leaves nothing behind on the device. The user will log in normally next time. |
| Can it be cancelled? | Yes — immediately, from the Access Tokens tab |
| Where does it go? | The portal home page for that user's account |
| Is it recorded? | Yes. Every link appears on the customer's Access Tokens tab, showing when it was created, whether it was used, and from what IP address. |
The 15-minute window is deliberate. A link that bypasses the password is only as safe as the channel it travels through, and email, chat and ticket systems are all places a link can sit and be read by someone else. Keeping the window short means a link that goes astray is almost always already dead.
Cancelling a link
Open the customer, go to the Access Tokens tab, find the link in the list, and click Revoke. It stops working immediately.
Do this if you sent a link to the wrong address, or if you're not confident it reached the right person. You can also use Revoke all access tokens from the row menu to invalidate every outstanding link for a user at once.
Login link vs. manually resetting the password
Both get a stuck user back in. They aren't equivalent.
|
|
Login link | Manual password reset |
|---|---|---|
| Lifespan | 15 minutes | Works until the user changes it |
| Reusable | No | Yes, indefinitely |
| If it's intercepted | Almost certainly expired already | Ongoing access to the account |
| User has to be available | Yes, immediately | No |
| Can be cancelled | Yes | Only by changing the password again |
If the user is available now, the login link is the safer choice — it can't be reused and it can't linger.
If they're not available, a password reset is the practical option, but treat that password as sensitive: send it through the most secure channel you have, and have the user change it as soon as they're in. See Is there some way to manually reset a user's password for that process.
Neither is a good long-term answer. Both exist because email delivery failed.
Troubleshooting
"This customer has no portal users yet." Nobody has been set up for this customer. Add a user on the customer's Users tab first.
The user you want isn't in the list. They may be suspended (shown greyed out), or they may not have access to this particular customer. Check the Users tab.
The link expired before they used it. Generate another one. If this keeps happening, the person isn't actually standing by — which is a sign this isn't the right tool for the situation.
The user clicked the link and was asked for a verification code. The link had already been used or expired, so the portal fell back to emailing a passcode. If your email delivery is the underlying problem, that code won't arrive either — generate a fresh link instead.
You're doing this several times a week. That's the real signal. Your portal's email isn't reaching your customers. See Email Setup.
Need Help?
If customers are regularly unable to log in, contact our support team — the fix is usually in your email configuration, and we can look at it with you. It helps to know:
- Your portal's From address and whether your domain shows as validated
- Whether customers are receiving any portal emails (invoices, receipts)
- Whether the problem affects everyone or only certain email domains