What your client sees in the portal
A walk through the client's side — sign-in, dashboard, documents, forms and profile — so you can talk someone through it without a screen share.
When a client is stuck, it helps to know exactly what is on their screen. Their portal is deliberately small: a sidebar with your organization's branding and four pages.
Signing in
Clients sign in at your portal sign-in page with the email the invitation was sent to. They set and reset their own password — Forgot password on that page — so you never handle credentials.
First time only, they follow the activation link from the invitation email, sign in or create an account, and accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Notice. Until they do that, sign-in tells them the account is not activated yet. See Invite a client and manage portal access.
Dashboard
Opens with "Welcome back, <first name>", then three tiles that link
onwards — Pending Requests, Submitted, and Shared Documents — and a
Recent Activity feed of their form requests: what changed, on which
request, and when.
If someone says "I can't find the form you sent", start here: pending requests is the first tile, and it links straight to the Forms page.
Documents
Two tabs:
- Shared with Me — what your team has shared with them, with the folder it came from, its size, its date, and a download control.
- My Uploads — everything they have sent you.
They upload by dragging files onto the page or using Upload: images, PDFs, Office documents, text, XML, or ZIP, up to 50 MB each. A search box filters both tabs at once.
If a client says a document is missing, it is almost always because it was never marked shared, or it sits on a record that is not theirs. See Share documents through the client portal.
Forms
A list of every request you have sent them, each showing the form name, the due date, and a status badge — Pending, Submitted, Approved, or Changes Requested.
Opening one starts a step-by-step form: one step per section, required fields checked before submitting, and file attachments where the section allows them. After submitting they can still read what they sent, but not change it.
If you send it back, the form reopens with their previous answers already filled in, your reviewer notes at the top, and your flags on the specific fields. They fix those and resubmit.
Profile
Their own details as you hold them. Nothing about your organization's internal records is reachable from here.
What they can never see
- Other clients, or any contact but their own.
- Your pipeline, notes, tasks, or internal documents.
- Any document you have not explicitly shared.
- Anything from another organization.
Common questions from clients
| They say | The answer |
|---|---|
| "The link says it expired." | The invitation timed out. You resend it from the portal console. |
| "It says my account isn't activated." | They never finished the activation link. Resend the invitation. |
| "It says the email doesn't match." | They are signed in with a different address than the one invited. Sign out, then use the invited address. |
| "My download link stopped working." | Download links are short-lived by design. Download again from the portal. |
| "I can't edit what I submitted." | Correct — submissions are read-only until a reviewer sends it back. |