1. Background

TechNova, a growing software products company, wanted to improve collaboration with its customers and partners.

- Customers needed a platform to raise cases, browse knowledge articles, and track resolutions.
- Partners needed a secure way to register deals, manage opportunities, and collaborate with TechNova’s sales team.

The company decided to leverage Salesforce Experience Cloud to build a unified portal that delivers personalized, branded, and secure experiences.

2. Challenges

Before implementing the portal, TechNova faced several issues:
- Customers had no self-service option; they relied heavily on email/phone support.
- Partners lacked a standard process for deal registration and opportunity tracking.
- TechNova’s teams struggled to scale support and partner management due to manual processes.
- No personalized experiences were in place; all users had generic touchpoints.

3. Implementation Approach

As the Salesforce Developer on this project, I designed and implemented the solution focusing on scalability, security, and user experience. The implementation was structured into four main themes:

1. Seamless Access & Security

- Set up the TechNova Portal in Experience Cloud.
- Configured self-registration for customers and invitation-only access for partners.
- Implemented MFA and Google social login for flexibility.
- Built a custom login flow to capture Terms & Conditions on first login.

2. Customer Empowerment

- Enabled Salesforce Knowledge to provide articles directly in the portal.
- Designed a Case Creation form with case deflection (knowledge suggestions).
- Developed a custom “My Cases” Lightning Web Component (LWC) allowing filtering, sorting, and status tracking.

3. Partner Enablement

- Implemented the Partner Account model for account-based visibility.
- Built a “Register a Deal” LWC to create leads from the portal.
- Exposed Opportunities securely, ensuring partners only see their account’s data.
- Configured a Partner Dashboard (Lightning Dashboard) to show pipeline visibility.

4. Personalization & Engagement

- Configured Audience Targeting: customers saw knowledge banners, partners saw deal registration prompts.
- Personalized home pages for different audiences.
- Enabled Gamification with Reputation Levels, Badges, and a Discussion Forum.
- Automated badge assignments to reward engaged customers.

4. Results & Outcomes

The solution was delivered in ~3 weeks of development effort (16–24 hours of active build time). The business achieved measurable improvements:

- Customer Experience:
• 60% of queries resolved via knowledge articles (deflecting cases).
• Customers can now log in, raise cases, and track progress without agent dependency.

- Partner Collaboration:
• Deal registration process reduced from days to minutes.
• Improved visibility into opportunities boosted partner trust and engagement.

- TechNova Internal Benefits:
• Reduced support team workload through self-service.
• Sales team gained better collaboration with partners.

- User Adoption:
• Personalized pages and gamification features encouraged higher portal engagement.

Partner User Portal

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Customer User Portal