PBI Web Portal 16 Setup

Email Setup

The web system uses email settings to send email notices to you as well as to the attorney (for example, in the event the attorney forgets his password). Since the system will send email, an email account for sending email is necessary. We suggest that this be a “send only” email account. In other words, the email should not be someone’s live account. You may still want to have someone monitor that account occasionally. Some organizations have chosen to establish an account called “DoNotReply”, with a name of “Do Not Reply”, so that the person receiving the email is notified by the name of the sender that they should not reply. So, for example, an email might come from the email address: DoNotReply@YourOrganizationDomain.com For system notifications, for example a new attorney registration or an attorney adding time to a case, we suggest that a group email be established to receive those notifications with more than one staff person being members of that group. Some organizations have chosen to establish a group email called “PBI Website Group”, with email being sent from the Portal to an email address something like: PBIWebsiteGroup@YourOrganizationDomain.com We suggest a group email instead of a single staff person for a reason: if email is sent to a single staff person and that staff person leaves, email notifications may not be received by anyone. With a group, there is the hope that remaining staff people would realize that one staff leaving would necessitate another being added to the group.  

System Setup

Some settings are necessary for the setup and use of the system. These settings are stored in a new table called PBIWebPortalSettings using a form in Prime Standard named fPBIWebPortalSettings, shown here and from the Administration menu in PBI Web Portal Settings section in Prime Web.

The settings shown include the email server settings (address, port, security), credentials of the email “user” that will be sending the email (username, password), the email address that will receive notification emails (address), whether the organization uses PBI Time Slips or Compensated Time Slips, whether the organization wants to track changes to cases in the case notes, what staff number should be used to make entries in the system, and the office number that should be used in entries in the system. The final box must always be TRUE, and it notes that it allows only one row in the table. If you try to add more than one row, you will receive an error. Additionally, the staff number and office number must exist in the system. You cannot use a nonsensical number for either. Generally, these are set to 9999 and entered in the SMEMBER and SUBOFFICE tables.

These settings were, in previous versions, stored in the website itself. However, they have been moved to the database to make them easier to change.

For testing purposes, to ensure your site is working properly, you may have to either (1) hijack an existing volunteer lawyer in your system and use his/her credentials in the website, or (2) create a dummy volunteer lawyer entry (e.g., first name: Test and last name: Test) and use it for your testing. We would suggest a dummy lawyer entry, as it is easiest to recognize entries with a dummy lawyer. The same thing is true for cases, you may want to enter a test client/case in Prime, then use it for testing purposes in the website.