Setting up the client portal

The client portal is your client’s window onto their project, and theirs alone: a client belongs to one project and never sees anything else. Client access itself is managed by an administrator on the project’s Client Portal tab; what each portal surface shows is controlled from that surface’s own tab.

Inviting your client

Enter their name and email address on the Client Portal tab. They receive an email with a temporary password and a Sign In button; signing in with it, they are asked to set a password of their own. Until then they show a Pending chip, with Re-send invitation next to it.

The temporary password expires after 7 days, and re-sending an invitation replaces it: the password in any earlier email stops working. A client who says their password is wrong is usually using an old email.

Removing a client deletes their account entirely and immediately; inviting them again later starts fresh.

What the client sees

Each part of the portal is controlled by something on your side:

• Site Updates: only the weekly client updates you have sent. Your team’s own site updates never appear.
• Drawings: only revisions marked Approved.
• Files: exactly the contents of the project’s Client Portal folder, and nothing else.
• Calendar: only events marked client visible, read-only.
• Snagging: read-only, once the project reaches Snagging.
• Contract: the Approved items, variations and selections, read-only apart from the client’s own decisions.
• My Project: the project’s details, milestones and activity feed, where the client and your team can post to each other.

The Client Portal folder rule is the one to remember for files. The portal’s file controls on the Client Portal tab are where you upload and organise files for the client, attachments on portal posts land in the same folder, and if a file is not in that folder, the client cannot see it.

Branding

Under Settings, on the Organisation page, you can upload your logo for the portal and set the reply address used on emails Navanto sends your clients, so replies come to your team.

Previewing as the client

View Portal opens what your client sees. You will have an Exit preview button they do not, but otherwise it is the real portal, working on the real data.

Acting in the preview is real: a post goes to the client’s activity feed, can be deleted by its author or an admin but never edited, and choices made in a selection wizard really are set. The two things a preview cannot do are decide a variation and sign off a selection; those belong to the client, or are recorded on their behalf from the team side.

When the project completes

Completing the project sets the date the client’s access ends, three months on. Their portal shows the date and an Export your data button; encourage them to use it before the date, after which the portal is no longer available to them.