What Cases Appear in the 'My Cases' List View for Salesforce Customer Portal Users

Case visibility in the Customer Portal is controlled by the Contact Name field on the Case, not by the Case Owner field. Understanding this distinction is essential for correct list view configuration.

How Case Visibility Works for Customer Portal Users

If the Customer Portal user is the Contact on the Case, they have the ability to see it. When a portal user selects the 'My Cases' list view, Salesforce returns cases where they are listed as the Case Contact — not cases where they are the Case Owner. This is by design, because in most scenarios a customer who logs a case is never the Case Owner, but almost always the Case Contact that an internal Case Owner reaches out to.

Configuration Requirements

To ensure that the 'My Cases' list view works correctly for community users, the following configuration must be in place:

1. The Case Organization-Wide Default (OWD) sharing setting must be set to Private.
2. A Sharing Set must be created for the Community profiles.
3. The 'My Cases' list view must have the "Visible to all users (Includes partner and customer portal users)" option selected.
   
   

Important Note: Self-Service Community Templates

For self-service community templates, the list view API still filters by caseownerid = currentUserId rather than by Case Contact. This means the 'My Cases' list view behavior differs for self-service community template users. Note that self-service community templates are in phased retirement and can no longer be used when creating new communities.

Workaround

For self-service community templates, or when custom filtering by contact is needed, create a custom formula checkbox field where ContactId = $User.ContactId and use this field as the filter criteria in the list view. This ensures the list view returns the correct cases for the logged-in portal user.