Working with External Customers (User Permissions)
FogBugz is designed to make it easy to receive bug reports, feature requests, and inquiries from external customers. There are three ways you can set this up.
1. Full Service Customers
In this scheme, customers submit inquiries via email, a web form, or the user interface of your software. They do not have access to the FogBugz system itself. Anyone with an account in FogBugz can send them an email message from FogBugz which will be logged with the case. If desired, other than the email messages these customers receive, they do not have any way of determining the status of their cases, because they did not set up an account and password. Otherwise, customers can keep track of their submitted cases via the case ticket they will receive as confirmation. Using this ticket, they can also view the status of all other cases they have submitted.
Typical uses: handling customer service email, handling executives who do not have time to learn about FogBugz and just need a question answered, etc.
2. Partner/Customers
In this scheme, you simply give a full FogBugz account to the customer. They can access FogBugz just like anyone else.
Typical uses: clients with whom you work closely who submit more than 1 case a week and are willing to create an account and learn their way around FogBugz.
3. Project Consulting Clients
This is for situations where you want clients to have full access to FogBugz, but each client's information is confidential and must be partitioned from other clients. Here you set up multiple installations of FogBugz side-by-side, probably on the same server with different URLs, and keep each client in their own separate FogBugz database. (Regarding licensing, your FogBugz licenses are tied to active named users, not to the number of FogBugz installations.)
Typical uses: consulting firms, web design firms, etc. who work with a limited number of high-contact customers.
