With customer access you involve contact persons of your customers in the Ticketing System: they record requests themselves, see the processing status and accept completed tickets. As administrator you define per contact person which tickets are visible and which actions are allowed.
Set up Login for a Customer Contact Person
Configure the access in the detail view of a customer contact under Customers > Contacts > (Person):
Enter a login name. For the password, choose between two options:
Send access information by email: ZEP automatically sends a link to set the password. The link is valid for 24 hours; afterwards it must be re-requested.
Enter password manually: You enter the password directly and pass it to the contact person via another channel.
Choose the ZEP language in which the interface is displayed for the contact person. If the field stays on Default, ZEP uses the company language stored under Administration > My Company > General. Alternatively you can fix the language to German or English.
Activate access via the option Access to ZEP Ticketing System. As long as this option is disabled, the contact person can log in but does not see any tickets.
Set Permissions per Project
Per permission, the following five visibility options are available — each can be enabled individually:
Customer access to tickets is read-only – the contact person can only view tickets, no status changes or comments.
See tickets without an assigned customer contact person – extends the view to project tickets without an explicit contact assignment.
Show planned hours – makes the stored planned hours visible to the customer.
Show actual hours – shows the already booked actual hours per ticket.
Show billable actual hours – additionally shows which hour portions are billable.
Per contact person you define which tickets they may see or edit. Permissions are granted per project or per task:
Project: Which project should the contact have access to?
Task: Optionally restrict to a specific task instead of releasing the whole project.
Has read-only access to tickets: The contact sees tickets but cannot create new ones or change existing ones.
Also sees tickets without assigned customer contact: By default the contact only sees tickets they are listed in as customer contact. With this option they see all tickets of the project.
Sees planned hours / actual hours / billable actual hours: Controls per hour type whether the corresponding figures are visible to the contact.
Note: For internal projects, you can only authorise customer contacts if the basic setting Customer contact persons can also be authorised for internal projects is active (see article on basic settings).
Customer Contact Person View
After login, the contact person works in a reduced interface. They exclusively see tickets they are authorised for in a dedicated view.
In the ticket list, the contact sees number, subject, status, priority and assignee of the tickets they are authorised for.
In the detail view they see the remarks history and, depending on permission, can add their own remarks or attachments.
With the option Customer access to tickets has read-only rights active in the basic settings, the contact can only read – not edit or create new tickets.
Create Tickets via Customer Contact Persons
If a contact has write permission, they can create a new request via the New ticket button in their ticket list. The form is reduced to the essentials:
Subject and description – the central request.
Project – from the projects the contact is authorised for.
Priority – if allowed, the customer can estimate urgency themselves.
Attachments – screenshots or documents that help clarify the request.
Accept Tickets
From the customer perspective, status changes are only allowed in the following cases: tickets in status done can be set to accepted, rejected or back to in process — all three paths require the corresponding permission. From other statuses, no status changes are available to customer contact persons.
On rejection, a comment is mandatory as justification. The current assignee receives an email notification with the note. Tickets cannot be deleted after creation — not even by the customer contact person. Once a ticket is created, it follows the lifecycle until an end status.
When a ticket is in status done, the customer contact can accept it in the customer access. The status then changes to accepted, the responsible assignee is informed and the ticket is considered operationally closed.
If you as provider decline acceptance or if rework is required, the status goes back to in progress. The rework is logged in the ticket history.