How do I allow any of our site visitors to be able to ask a question? 

Environment:

Customer Portal, End-user pages

Issue:

Some visitors have tried to submit a question but when they tried to log in with their email address, they receive a "Login Failed" message.

Resolution:

The default configuration of customer portal pageset allows anyone to submit a question from the Ask a Question tab.  The user does NOT have to have a full account to submit a question.  (If they only have a partial account, they cannot log in to see the question or update from the Your Account page, but they can submit questions just fine.)

Additionally, by default, the Login page includes the option for end-users to create a new account. Users can click the Create a New Account (or Sign Up) button and complete the form to define their email address, login, and password along with other requested information.

You can configure your end-user pages to remove the Create a New Account button so that users cannot create a new account.  With this configuration, end-users must have a contact record in the database in order to submit incidents from the Ask A Question page. This allows you to designate specific contacts who have the ability to submit incidents to your support group.