- Overview
- What is available to me as an Essentials client?
- Where do you start?
- Which view should you offer each client?
- Getting ready to send out welcome emails
- Choosing your email notification recipients
- Before you invite each client…..
- Previewing the information your client will see
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Can I have my own wording and content on the welcome emails?
- I want to share documents with my clients, but I’d rather they contact me via email or telephone. Ca...
- More information…
Overview
This article has been created to help guide you through rolling out the Client Portal to your customers.
In particular, we know that there is a lot of information on the Community already, but it only applies to you if you manage your own Xplan site.
This material has been specifically prepared for you as Essentials clients, where Iress are your site administrators. Thankfully, many of the steps that our clients on their own Xplan site have to follow are already complete for you.
Read on to learn more about your options.
What is available to me as an Essentials client?
This will depend on the service package / proposition you’re on.
If you’re not sure, you can find out by following these steps.
The following features are available: -
| Essentials only | Essentials+ | |
| Secure messages | a | a |
| Digital signatures | a(optional) | a(optional) |
| Review check-in | a(optional) | a(optional) |
| Onboarding fact find | a(optional) | a(optional) |
| Onboarding fact find configuration |
a (Specify recipients for email notifications only (e.g. notify when completed, opted out, or when a document is signed or declined). Remainder of the fact find is standard and cannot be configured.) |
a (Full range of options - see here.) |
|
Net worth view (Balance Sheet) |
r | a |
| Portfolio views | r | a |
Where do you start?
You may already have a clear idea about what you want to use Client Portal for. You may only want to offer it to certain clients. If you’re on Essentials+, you may decide to offer the basic messages only view to some clients, but the full portfolio view including charts to others.
However, if you’ve never offered a Client Portal before - how do you get started in defining your strategy. There’s a great article here to help get you thinking.
Which view should you offer each client?
If you use the XplanCentral3 site and are an Essentials only client (how to tell?), then the only view available to you is messages only.
However, if you’re on Essentials+ you have a choice of all of the three views described above (messages / net worth / portfolio). You’re an Essentials+ user if you use XplanCentral, XplanCentral1, XplanCentral2 or ThreeSixty. In addition, if you’re on XplanCentral3 and have selected the Essentials+ package, then this will also apply to you.
To help you decide between the views, there are guidance notes here. The good news is that you don't need to make one decision for all of your clients - you can vary it client by client (as some clients may not have the data in their Xplan client record to warrant a more detailed view).
Getting ready to send out welcome emails
When you first set up a client access account, Xplan will automatically send out two emails to the client. One - the “username” email, will typically include the username and the URL (web link) of your Client Portal. The other - the “password” email - will just contain the password. Emails are split for security purposes, so that if someone sees a single email, the URL, username and password don’t all appear together.
As a pre-requisite, the Client Portal URL / web link needs to be added to the user profiles of all members of your team who act as primary advisers to your clients. The username email template we’ve set up has some special code in it which will then pull through the URL to the email. This will happen regardless of who sets up the client access account - so even if an admin person does it, it will still pull the URL from their primary adviser.
You can add this URL / web link to your own user profile, or even do it yourself for your colleagues. There’s no harm in adding it to everyone, but only colleagues who are recorded as primary advisers really need it.
To add it to each user record: -
- Search for your colleagues’ name in the search box at the top right (click into the box and ensure “Users” is selected.
- If you hit Enter without adding a name in, it will show you a list of all of your colleagues and you can click into each one. Alternatively, type in the name of the first colleague who you’d like to add the website link to.
- Click on the main menu (the highlighted person icon in the left hand menu) and go to Key Details > Contact.
- In the Telephone/Email section, click to add a new contact.
- Select a type of “Website” and in the Value field, type in your Client Portal URL / web link. Please contact us if you’re not sure what that is.
- Click Save
- Repeat for all of your colleagues.
Note: It’s also possible for each person who acts as a client adviser in Xplan to do this for their own user profile: -
- Click on your username at the top right of the screen and click on ‘My Preferences’: -
- In the left hand menu, go to My details > Contact details and scroll down to the Telephone / Email panel.
- Click the Add button and enter a contact type of “Website” and your Client Portal URL / web link: -
- That’s it. Provided everyone who is recorded as a “Client Adviser” in all of your client records has this set up, the web link will appear on all of the username welcome emails.
Choosing your email notification recipients
Client Portal offers the ability for you and your team to receive email notifications when your clients do certain things in the Portal. Although this is optional and your clients won’t be affected in their use of the Portal if you don’t set these up, it’s strongly recommended that you do. These notifications can be triggered in these circumstances: -
- When a client sends a message via the Portal
- When a client digitally signs a document
- When a client declines to sign a document
- When a client completes the Client Portal fact find
- When a client opts out of completing the Client Portal fact find
As an Essentials client, you can choose which types of user (members of your team) want to receive these notifications. The types of user you can choose from are the roles which appear on the Client Details > Client Segmentation page within any client record, i.e.: -
- Client Adviser
- Paraplanner
- Administrator
- Insurance Adviser
- Investment Adviser
- Mortgage Adviser
- Client Services Manager
You can choose a combination of up to five recipient roles to receive the notification - and you can choose a different combination of recipients per email if that helps. For example, if a client completes their fact find, you may want their paraplanner to know, but if they opt out, you might want an administrator to contact the client to arrange a meeting or telephone call.
It’s also very possible if you aren’t in a large team, that the person recorded as the adviser is also the paraplanner, administrator and investment adviser, for example. In this case, they will still only receive one notification.
Before you invite each client…..
The information your clients see when they log in is all housed within Xplan. If a value is inaccurate in Xplan, or the wrong document is shared with them in Xplan, then these mistakes will be very apparent to your clients.
Therefore, we would always advise you to sanity check your clients’ data before they log in. There is a handy guide here.
Previewing the information your client will see
If you want to get a real view of what your client will see when they log in for the first time, it’s possible to log into Client Portal as a user, as opposed to a client.
All you need to do is to click onto the Adviser tab on your login screen and log in using your usual Xplan username and password.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I have my own wording and content on the welcome emails?
Yes, this is possible. Please raise a request to the team by clicking on this link.
I want to share documents with my clients, but I’d rather they contact me via email or telephone. Can I disable inbound messaging from the Portal?
Yes, this is possible. We would always recommend that client communications are handled via the Portal. The content of the messages and any attachments are sent securely to Xplan, but emails are open to being intercepted over the Internet. If you would still prefer to prevent clients from sending you a message via the Portal, please raise a request to the team by clicking on this link.
More information…
We have a guide for users which explains how each area of Client Portal works. We think this will be useful in helping you to answer queries from your clients.
The adviser guide is here.
