Customer Portal

The Customer Portal plug-in for WooCommerce enables seamless integration between your webshop and Business Central. It adds a professional self-service environment to the ‘My Account’ section of your webshop, giving your customers direct access to important Business Central data - securely and in real time.

This plug-in is designed to improve customer experience, reduce manual tasks, and streamline communication. Instead of contacting your support team, customers can log in to their account and immediately view the information they need.

Key Features

  • Display Business Central data: Show customer-specific information such as orders, invoices, shipments, RMAs and Credit memos.

  • Customizable content: Choose which sales documents and fields are shown in the account section, based on what’s relevant to your customers.

  • PDF downloads: Allow customers to download documents like invoices, packing slips, and order confirmations as PDF files - directly from their account.

  • Automatic data sync: The plug-in retrieves the latest information from Business Central in real time, ensuring accuracy and up-to-date content.

  • Smart fallback handling: If no Business Central connection is available or the customer data is incomplete, the standard WooCommerce account page is displayed automatically.

  • Built-in flexibility: Includes styling options and performance optimizations such as progressive loading and scheduled refreshes.

Whether you're looking to improve service levels, reduce support overhead, or provide a more professional B2B experience, the Customer Portal plug-in helps bring Business Central data directly to your customers - where and when they need it.

Step-by-step Configuration Guide

 

Business Central

Install the Tinx Customer Portal extension via AppSource and follow step 1 and 2 (optional) of the step-by-step guide shown above.

WooCommerce

Install the Tinx Customer Portal WooCommerce plug-in. If you don't have access to our plug-in please reach out to our support department.

Configuration Reference

In the Wordpress back-end go to Tinx Customer Portal > General Settings. In the configuration you can find the following fields:

  • Field Explanation
    API Connection > Tenant ID

    This variable is included in the request sent by WooCommerce to obtain the OAuth token and retrieve sales documents from Business Central.

    tenantGuid (see screenshot).
    API Connection > Company GUID

    This variable is included in the request sent by WooCommerce to obtain the OAuth token and retrieve sales documents from Business Central.

    Company GUID Go to your Business Central and Search for the company you want to make a connection with. Type in the search bar ‘companies’, click on ‘Companies’, select the company and open the page inspection tool (CRTL+ALT+F1) (see screenshot).
    API Connection > Company Name

    This variable is included in the request sent by WooCommerce to retrieve sales document PDFs from Business Central.

    companyName (see screenshot).
    API Connection > Environment Name This variable is included in the request sent by WooCommerce to obtain the OAuth token and retrieve sales documents from Business Central.

    environmentName (see screenshot).
    API Connection > Client ID

    The Client ID is a unique identifier for your application within Microsoft Entra ID. It tells Business Central which application is requesting access. You can find this value in the App registrations section of the Azure portal.

    See step 1 of the step-by-step guide.
    API Connection > Client Secret

    The Client Secret acts as a secure password for your application. It proves to Microsoft Entra ID that the request is coming from a trusted and authorized app. You create the Client Secret in the Certificates & secrets section of your app registration in the Azure portal.

    See step 1 of the step-by-step guide.
    API Connection > Connection Status Displays the current connection status with Business Central, including whether the connection is active, if PDF retrieval is possible, and when the access token expires.
    Front-end > Business Central Section Title

    Defines the section title displayed in the left-hand sidebar for Sales Documents
    Front-end > Hide WooCommerce Orders

    By default, the WooCommerce account page includes a menu item for WooCommerce orders. Use this option to disable that menu item.
    Front-end > Customer Number Required

    When this feature is enabled, only users with a Customer No. set in their WordPress profile will have access to the Customer Portal elements on their account page. If no Customer No. is provided, the user will see the default WooCommerce account page instead.
    Front-end > Amount of items per page

    Defines how many entries are shown per page in the Sales Documents tables.
    Styling Define the styling elements of the tables displaying the sales entities in the customer's account, such as font size and colors.
    Advanced > Progressive Loading

    When enabled, the first page loads immediately for faster access, while remaining pages are fetched in the background.
    Advanced > Scheduled Data Refresh (SDR)

    The plugin regularly checks whether the connection with Business Central is still active. This ensures that data is kept up to date and that the connection remains valid. If the connection is no longer active, the plugin will automatically disable itself on the front-end or deactivate certain components.
    Advanced > Refresh Interval

    Defines how often the plugin verifies the connection to Business Central to keep data up to date and ensure system reliability.
    Advanced > SDR Status

    Displays the status and timing of the scheduled task that checks the connection to Business Central, including the next run time, interval, and last execution.
    Advanced > Debug Logging

    Enable or disable logging of API requests and errors to assist with troubleshooting.
    Advanced > Data Clean Up

    When enabled, all plugin settings and customer data will be permanently deleted when the plugin is uninstalled. This action is irreversible.

  • We created the following sales document * API pages in Business Central: Sales Orders, Sales Invoices, Sales Shipment, Sales Credit Memo and Return Receipt Headers. Those pages are used by the Customer Portal extension as a default to retrieve real-time information from Business Central. 


    Field Explanation
    General > Enable Determines whether sales documents should be retrieved in real time from Business Central.
    General > Name Title of the sales entity menu-item in the account section of the customer.
    General > Display Sales Lines

    Determines whether sales lines should be retrieved in real time from Business Central
    General > Show PDF Button

    Allow customers to download Orders as PDF
    General > Filter Sales Lines by Type Allows you to filter which types of sales lines are retrieved from Business Central, such as items, G/L Accounts, or comments. This helps control which line types are shown in the Customer portal.
    Refresh Entity Data

    Manually retrieve new types or fields. This will not affect your current configuration.
    Field Management > Field Name

    This field corresponds to the field name in Business Central. Use drag-and-drop to adjust the sort order of fields as they appear.
    Field Management > Display Label Allows you to customize the display name of the field as shown in the customer's account page.
    Field Management > Display on Front-end Show or hide this field on the customer's account page.

Postman (optional)

Postman is a standalone software testing API (Application Programming Interface) platform to build, test, design, modify, and document APIs. You can use Postman to test and see which field identifiers are available in the API pages. You can download Postman here.

To make life easier for you we prepared a Postman collection. You can download the collection here. This will help you setting up a Postman configuration to make a connection with Business Central. To set this up please follow the steps below:

  • Step 1: Open Postman.
    a) Go to your workspace.
    b) Click on import and drag-and-drop the 'Example Customer Portal.postman_collection' file in the import-window.

  • Step 2: Open the 'Example Customer Portal' collection and navigate to the 'Variables' tab
    Replace the dummy information in the 'Initial value' column with your business central data. The 'Initial value' and 'Current value' column should contain the same information. After this has been done save the collection

    a) tenantGuid - see screenshot
    b) companyGuid - see screenshot
    c) clientId - see step 2 in the Business Central section
    d) clientSecret - see step 4 in the Business Central section
    e) companyName - see screenshot
    f) environmentName - see screenshot

  • Step 3: Open the 'Example salesOrders' request and navigate to the 'Authorization' tab
    a) To retrieve a Business Central token click on the orange button 'Get New Access Token'. If successful click on the orange button 'Use Token'. Now you've a token which is used to make a connection with Business Central (valid for one hour (by default)).
    b) Click on the blue button 'Send' to get the sales order information in the Postman response section. 

    Tip1: This example is for retrieving the sales orders list. To check which API pages are available remove the /salesOrders from the url.
    Tip2: You can add filters to your request, here you can find all supported filters. E.g.
    ../salesOrders?$filter=sellToCustomerNo eq 'XXXX'

  • Step 4: Open the 'getPDF' request and navigate to the 'Authorization' tab
    a) To retrieve a Business Central token click on the orange button 'Get New Access Token'. If successful click on the orange button 'Use Token'. Now you've a token which is used to make a connection with Business Central (valid for one hour (by default)).
    b) Navigate to the 'Body' tab and replace the 'Your documentNo' with a Business Central sales order No.
    c) Click on the blue button 'Send' to get the sales order information in the Postman response section. 

    Tip: To get other PDF documents (not from sales orders). You can replace the 'PrintPDFOrder' element name in the 'Body' tab with: PrintPDFQuote, PrintPDFInvoice, PrintPDFShipment or PrintPDFCredit.