Customer Portal: setting up permission to view cases associated with children accounts

[alvatse]

Can the following permission be set up for a Customer Portal User?

Contact: John Smith

Associated with Account 1

John only has 1 contact record in SFDC, but he oversees 2 accounts: Account 1, and Account 2.

John needs permission to see Cases associated with both Accounts 1 and 2. The only solution I'm aware of is to create a 2nd Contact record for John and link to Account 2. This essentially would cost another $5/month because it's a 2nd portal license, but John needs to use different portal logins for each Account. Is there a better solution? Thanks.

[MATTYBME]

On Account 1 select the Share button and Add John to the sharing permissions with Read/Write Access on Cases and Read or Read/Write Access on the Account. Then do the same thing for Account 2, adding John in the sharing permissions with the same access. Make sure John's Customer Portal role is either Manager or Executive. Also it would not hurt to set up a Case view called something like "All Account's Cases" and make it visible to Customer Portal Users, making sure that one of the available columns is the Account Name. The view that John will see upon entering the Portal and selecting the "All Account's Cases" will be those Account's Cases that you have made him part of the shared permissions on that Account.