With channel-specific branding, the reseller functionality is provided with CloudPortal Business Manager. Service providers can now offer their cloud services through resellers. Resellers can give a customized experience to their tenants, with tenants being able to use the cloud services under a reseller brand. A different look and feel can now be incorporated to distinguish a channel or reseller and enable resellers to target and serve different customers in a better way.

Channel-specific branding is done by providing channel-specific logos, CSS, and favicons and modifying the interfaces, headers, footers, and so on. You have the capability to over-ride portal-wide settings and specify default time zones, locales, email addresses, phone numbers, and custom content templates for a channel. Resellers can point the users to their own URLs. Personalized communication at the channel level is also possible. In addition, you can set up channel-specific black and white lists for email domains and countries. You can also open and close a channel for registration.

As a service provider, you are responsible for branding the channels and perform the functions of a channel administrator. The CloudPortal Business Manager UI enables you to configure channel-specific branding. Some additional configuration is required at the back end to enable channel-specific branding. At any time, you can revert to the default global settings configured for the portal.

As part of channel-specific branding, the service provider can assign a unique FQDN prefix for a channel. The FQDN prefix is a prefix to the CPBM Host URL. The FQDN is used to resolve to the channel-specific sign-up page, login page, and anonymous catalog. When a user accesses the CPBM host URL using the FQDN, the FQDN is used to resolve to the channel context for the user. When the FQDN prefix has been configured, users should access portal using the FQDN prefix that has been configured on their channel. Service provider users have to log in using the CPBM host URL only.

You can provide reseller/channel specific communication by overriding the default global-level content templates such as invoices, customer facing emails, support ticket notification to help desk, and so on.

Reseller/channel specific URLs for Help, Support, Contact, and so on can be specified. These URLs are used across the system and each reference will resolve to the channel's overridden URL. Global URLs are used only if they are not defined for a channel.

At a channel level, you can grant or deny access to customers based on their geographic location by providing black and white lists. It is recommended that you enable the GeoIP protection service when you define white and black lists for a channel. A white list always takes precedence over a blacklist. When there is no white list defined for a channel and if a global white list has been defined, it takes precedence.

At a channel level, you can grant or deny access to customers based on their email domains. Users who attempt to sign up with an email domain that you mark as blacklisted will have their sign up process aborted. An email domain white list always takes precedence over an email domain black list.

The service provider can open and close a channel for registration. Self-registration is not allowed if a channel is closed for registration. By default, the value of the parameter "allow.signup" specifies whether the channel is open or closed for registration. The service provider can over-ride this setting for every channel and specify a value that is different from the default either during channel creation or by editing a channel's settings. The default channel always reflects the value that is globally defined. If you designate a channel as the default channel, then the channel-specific setting for signup is ignored. If the global allow.signup value is true, then the default channel is open for registration even if the channel has been configured as closed for registration.

When an account is created in the channel, the channel's default time zone and locale are set for the account, unless these settings are overridden during the account creation process. At any time, the user can change the time zone and locale by editing the user profile.