The Self Service Portal includes a resource library — a Resources page where your members can browse, search and download the documents you publish: handbooks, journals, case studies, member offers and similar. Each resource can be restricted to specific user roles, so different audiences can see different content.
This page covers the one-off setup an administrator does before your team starts publishing: granting your content team permission to manage resources, setting up the resource categories, and preparing role-based access.
This page is for administrators setting the resource library up. If you just need to publish or edit resources day to day, see How to publish resources to the Self Service Portal.
What can I do in CiviPlus?
Give your members a Resources page in the portal, with resources grouped into categories and filterable by keyword, type and published date.
Restrict any resource — including its file downloads — to specific user roles, so for example only current members see member offers.
Let a content role (typically SSP Manager) publish resources and manage the category list without full administrator access.
Rename, add and reorder the resource categories to suit your organisation.
Before you start
What this needs: an administrator account on your CiviPlus site, and the Self Service Portal with the SSP Resources feature (included on CiviPlus sites from Compuclient 4.3 — if your portal has no Resources page, contact the helpdesk and we can enable it for you).
Set up your resource categories
Every resource sits in one or more categories, and the portal's Resources page is grouped by them. Four categories are provided to start you off: Guide, Journal, Case Study and Discount offer. You can rename or replace these freely — your changes are kept when the product is updated.
Open the user menu at the top right of the portal and choose Manage SSP Taxonomies. Administrators and SSP Managers both see this link.
On the taxonomy list, click list terms next to SSP Resource Category.
Use Add term to create categories, edit to rename them, and drag the handles to reorder — the order here is the order the category groups appear in on the Resources page. Click Save when you're done.
Step 3 — Prepare role-based access (optional)
Each resource has a User Roles setting controlling who sees it. By default a new resource is visible to every logged-in portal user; selecting specific roles hides it — and its attachments — from everyone else, both in the portal listings and on direct links.
How this works: role restrictions are only useful if the right people hold the right roles. If you want to target members or membership tiers, set up membership role sync (or group role sync) first, so your members are automatically given a role such as Member while their membership is current. Please do get in touch with us if you'd like to understand more of the options here.
Checking it worked
Log in as (or view the portal with) a member account and open Resources in the portal navigation. You should see the resource library grouped by your categories, with a search box and Show Filters at the top.
That's the setup done. Your content team can now publish resources — point them at How to publish resources to the Self Service Portal.
Related articles
How to publish resources to the Self Service Portal — the day-to-day guide for your content team.
Introduction to the Self Service Portal — what the portal is and what it can do.
Creating Self Service Portal Users from CiviPlus Contacts — get your members logging in.
SSP News — the portal's news feature, managed in a similar way.