Use Concierge to give staff quick access to information on a record and common actions like submitting a form or setting an interaction. A Concierge portal works like a front desk. A staff member searches for a person or application record, and the portal shows only the details and actions you chose to expose.
🔑 Required Permissions
Accessing the Concierge module requires the Database permission. Each Concierge grantee needs the User Access permission for the Concierge portal and the Person Lookup permission.
📝 Note
Concierge requires the universal Person Lookup permission. A user who instead has Person Lookup (by Population) can't search records in Concierge, even for records inside their populations. The portal opens and accepts input, but the search never returns results: the suggestion list shows Searching... indefinitely.
To set up a Concierge:
Create an Express Portal to display the record data.
Create a Concierge portal that points to it.
Step 1: Create an Express Portal
To create and design the portal that displays record data for your staff:
Go to Database → Portals
Select Express Portals from the sidebar navigation.
Select New Express Portal.
Configure the following settings:
Status: Set to Active.
Name: Enter a descriptive name.
Key: Enter a unique key with no spaces or special characters.
Folder: Select a folder to keep your Express Portals organized. To create a folder, select Other and enter a name.
Scope: Select Person, Application, or Dataset depending on the records you want users to search for.
Security: Set to User. Here, User means someone signed in to your Slate database, not a person who has a record in it.
Select Save.
On the Express Portal summary page, select Edit.
Under Restrict Access, add filters to limit which person or application records staff can find through Concierge. Skip this step if no restrictions are needed.
Select Save to return to the summary page for the Express Portal.
Select Edit Permissions.
Select Add Grantee.
Configure the following settings:
Active: Set to Active.
Type: Select the grantee type: User, Role, or Permission. Then select the grantee itself, such as the user Alexander Hamilton or the role Visit Coordinator. The Permission type matches a custom permission created in your database, not a permission delivered with Slate.
Permissions: Select the access to grant. For a portal, the options are Edit Portal and User Access. Concierge grantees need User Access; Edit Portal also grants write access to the portal itself.
Select Save to return to the Edit Permissions popup. Repeat the previous two steps for each additional grantee.
Select Close to return to the Express Portal summary page.
Configure the portal's views to display the person- or application-scoped data you want Concierge users to see at a glance. A new portal already has a Home (Default) view. To edit it, double-click it in the Views section, or select the pencil icon that appears when you point at it. To add another view, select View from the palette.
Views are also where you add the actions staff can take on a record. Add widgets to a view from the view palette. The Form widget embeds a Slate form, which is the usual way to submit a form or set an interaction from a portal.
📖 Further reading:
Express Portals: views and the view palette
Liquid Markup Looping: displaying repeating record data, such as a list of interactions
Step 2: Create a Concierge portal
To create the Concierge portal that staff search from:
Select Database → Portals.
Select Concierge from the sidebar navigation.
Select New Concierge.
Configure the following settings:
Status: Set to Active.
Name: Enter a descriptive name for the Concierge portal.
Portal: Select the Express Portal that displays your data. The list also includes conventional portals, so check that you're selecting the Express Portal you created in Step 1.
Select Save to return to the Concierge summary page.
Select the Concierge portal you just created.
In the Edit Concierge popup, select Preview.
Enter the name of a record. The preview shows what a Concierge user sees when they search for that record.
Share the Concierge portal
The Concierge summary page doesn't list a link to the live portal. To get its URL, select the Concierge portal, select Preview, and copy the address from your browser. Send that URL to the staff members who need it. They must sign in to Slate before the portal will open.
The Express Portal has its own URL, listed on its summary page. That address opens the portal without the Concierge search, so don't share it for Concierge access. Ask staff to bookmark the Concierge preview URL, or add it to your Slate homepage.
💼 Try a Slate example
Use Suitcase to import an example Concierge portal:
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