Difference between "Customer User" and "Customers"

[splinter]

Hey again,

can someone explain to me the difference between "Customer User" and "Customers" when going to "Admin" --> "Customer Management".
The only thing I found was in the "OTRS Admin Manual" --> "Using external backends", which didn't make the meanings much clearer to me.

Thanks

Tobi

[RStraub]

Hey there,

those terms aren't consistently used throughout OTRS. You should differenciate between:
- CustomerUser => A person with an email address that can take actions etc. (similar to an agent, but on the... well customer site)
- Customers , or sometime CustomerCompany => The company to which a CustomerUser can belong. This entity does not take actions and has no contact info (but might have an address).

What does OTRS do with the information?
If multiple customer(-user) are assigned to a single customer(-company), then all those users can see the tickets that are assigned to the company.
I'd imagine it does also help when doing reports and statistics, but I'm not sure about that.