Customer portal
Customer portal
Who can do this: Manage Members for External Users and External Portals. Owner to change the directory Settings and to preview the portal as a customer. The item's creator or Owner for External users access…. Rights are explained in the .
What it's for
The portal is a separate sign-in website for your customers and partners. They see only what you publish to it, and only the rows and columns you allow. Their accounts are separate from your team's accounts. Use it for price lists, orders, requests, forms and documents sent for approval.
This chapter takes you from nothing to a first customer signed in. Every setting of the External Portals dialog is explained in .
How access is decided
A customer reaches an item only when all four gates are open:
Gate | Where you set it | If it is closed |
|---|---|---|
1. The item is published to the portal | External users access… → Publish in the external portal | The item is invisible, even if a group has rights on it |
2. Their group (or they, or their company) has a right on it | External users access… → Who has access | Published, but nobody can open it |
3. Which rows they see (tables) | External users access… → What they see → Row filter | A table with no row rule is blocked, not shown in full |
4. Which columns they see (tables) | External users access… → What they see → Column visibility | Hidden columns are not shown to customers |
Before you start
Customers sign in by email. The sign-in page accepts any email address and creates an account on first sign-in. That account sees nothing until it is in a group, unless a directory admits it automatically (see the warning in step 6). Decide how new people get in before you share the address.
Needs your administrator: sending invitations and sign-in links needs outgoing email and the instance's public address. Ask for "outgoing email (SMTP) and the Public App URL set under System → Config". You can tell it is missing when Send invite or Send returns "Public App URL is not configured" or "Check SMTP configuration". The Portal URL field in External Portals also shows an amber warning when the address is missing. See .
Steps
1. Create an external group
Open the space menu and choose External Users.
Go to the Groups tab.
In New external group name, type a name such as "Dealers", then choose Create.
A group made here has the audience External. Groups made in Users and rights are for your team. Do not use those for customers.
2. Publish items to the portal
In the navigator, right-click a folder, document, table, form or dashboard and choose External users access…. Or open its menu.
Turn on Publish in the external portal.
A folder publishes everything inside it. This dialog is independent of your team's access: sharing here does not change who on your team can see the item.
You need to be the item's creator or have Owner. Otherwise the menu entry is disabled.
3. Give the group rights
In the same dialog, stay on Who has access → Groups.
Choose the group under Select an external group…, tick the rights and choose Add.
The rights offered are Read, Comment and Edit. A form offers only Submit, because a form is used only by submitting it. To grant one person or one company instead, use the Users or Companies tab. Companies is empty until you set up a directory (step 6).
To give an external group rights on the whole space instead, open Users and rights → Group rights, pick the group under Add group access and choose Add Group. External groups are listed there too. The count beside a name covers team members only, so an external group shows "(0 members)". These rights count on every item you publish to the portal, on top of the group's per-item rights, so they satisfy gate 2 for all of them. They open nothing that is not published (gate 1 still applies), and an item you publish later is open to the group at once.
If you published an item and nobody has a right on it, the dialog warns you that it "won't be visible to portal users" yet.
4. Limit which rows a customer sees
Only for data tables. Open What they see → Row filter and choose one:
Only the rows they created: each customer sees the rows they submitted. This is what the tab shows when nothing is saved.
Rows matching their profile: match a column against the viewer's company, group or other attributes. Use it for "orders of my company".
Everyone sees all rows: use it only for reference data such as a price list.
Choose Save when you are done. If a table has neither a row rule nor a column that records who submitted each row, the portal refuses to show it. That is deliberate: it never falls back to showing everything.
Row visibility in Manage access… (see the ) is for your team. It has no effect on what a customer sees: the portal reads a table only through its Row filter. For customers use Row filter.
5. Hide columns from customers
Only for data tables. Open What they see → Column visibility. For each column choose Specific groups and tick the groups that may read it, or choose Nobody (hidden). Once the table is closed for customers (see below), that pill reads Hidden (default).
Careful: the first time you save here, the table switches to "closed" for customers. From then on, columns you add later stay hidden until you share them. Columns that were visible before the first save stay visible. The tab tells you which case applies.
6. Link customers to companies and contacts (recommended)
This lets you share by company and filter rows by company. Skip it if you only invite individuals.
Open External Users → Settings. Only an Owner can change them.
In Identity table, pick the table that holds your customer contacts. Only tables that have a portal-account column are listed.
Fill Email field, Portal-account field and Name field. The name and the email are both needed to invite from a directory row.
To use companies, pick Company reference field. The Companies table follows from it. Then pick Domain field.
Pick Default external group: the group new accounts join.
Choose Save configuration.
When someone first signs in, the system looks at their email domain. If exactly one company row has that domain, they are linked to it. Public providers such as Gmail are never linked automatically.
Careful: the switch Users can self-register without a pre-created account is how a directory admits people on their own. When it is on, anyone who can reach the sign-in page and prove an email address gets an account in that directory and joins the Default external group. Everything that group may open is then open to them. For a private portal choose Invite-only. The form opens with self-registration shown as on for a space that has no saved configuration, but nothing is stored until you save.
You can add more than one directory with Add directory, for example customers and suppliers. Only one directory can accept self-registration.
7. Invite your first customer
In External Users, open Invitations.
Under Register & invite, enter the email, optionally a name, a company (or leave No company / auto-detect), and a group (or leave Default group).
Check Language. The invitation is written in that language.
Choose Send invite.
The invitation link is valid for 24 hours. A person can ask for a new link on the sign-in page at any time. At most five sign-in or invitation emails go to one address per hour; the sixth is refused with "Rate limited".
To send a link without registering anyone, open External Portals → Overview, type the email under Send sign-in link and choose Send. The account row is created when the person actually signs in.
8. Preview the portal as a customer
Do this before you send the address to anyone.
In External Portals → Overview, choose Copy next to Portal URL, or Open portal to open it.
Stay signed in to your team account in that browser. Under the sign-in form you will see an amber box titled "Admin: view portal as an external user". This label is shown in English only. It appears only if you have Owner.
Pick a customer from the list. You enter the portal as that person in a read-only session. You cannot edit, submit or comment. Each entry is logged.
The portal also shows a banner that you are signed in to the team workspace. To see exactly what a stranger sees, open the address in a private window and sign in with a test customer instead.
9. Choose where customers land
In External Portals → Start pages, set one document per group, company or user. Without one, a new customer sees "Select an item" until they pick something. See .
What customers see
A navigation tree of the items you published and granted, with a filter box. A customer with nothing granted sees "Nothing has been shared with you yet."
Documents, tables, forms and dashboards. Tables can be sorted and filtered. Dashboard panels are limited to each viewer's own rows; spreadsheet panels are not shown.
A Notifications bell, and optionally an Assistant chat (External Portals → Overview → AI assistant, off by default). The assistant is read-only and can only see what that customer may see. Its answers count against the space's AI credits, in the same way as the team assistant: credits are worked out from the tokens used and the provider's credit rate, which your administrator sets. Reaching the monthly AI credits limit does not by itself stop the portal assistant, because that limit is checked only on calls through the AI proxy endpoint.
An account menu with Set a password, Passkeys, Language and Sign out. New customers see a banner, "Set up faster sign-in".
Sign-in with an Email link (or the 6-digit code from the same email), a Password, or a passkey.
If you made them a group Manager: an Invite members button. They can paste up to 50 emails at once, pick a group, and choose Send invites.
Customers see "Your requested items" when you have issued them requests to fill. Setting those up is not covered here.
Documents sent for approval
You can send a document to a customer to review, and take it back afterwards.
Open the document. In the toolbar's Document state menu, open the State model submenu and pick the built-in model named "External review" (in an English space). The space creates this model the first time the list is opened. It has the states "Internal review", "Sent for external review", "External review with changes", "Approved by external" and "External review timed out". These are state names, not interface labels.
Move the document to "Sent for external review". The Send for external review dialog opens.
Pick the Recipient (a portal user) and optionally Also share with group (optional). Choose What the reviewer can do: Comment only, Comment + fill fields or Full edit. The dialog opens with Full edit selected.
Optionally set Response deadline and a Message for the reviewer (optional). The built-in model times out after 3 days if you set nothing.
Choose Send for review. The document is published to the portal for that reviewer automatically, and your team editor is locked while they have it.
The customer sees a Review badge and a Needs review filter. They choose Approve, or Return for revision with an optional message. You see each round under External review rounds. To pull the document back, choose Revoke review: their in-flight edits are kept in the version history.
Managing people
Open External Users → Users. Filter by status (Blocked, Pending, CRM linked, Not linked), group or directory. Open the row's Actions menu for:
Set as Manager / Set as User: a manager sees the whole group's rows and can invite members. The person must be in a group first.
Move to directory, when you have more than one directory.
Sign out on all devices: ends every session.
Delete user: removes the portal account, its sessions, group memberships and access grants. The contact row in your table stays, only its link is removed. You can invite the address again.
To block someone, open the contact's row in your identity table and click its portal-account cell, titled Portal account. Choose Block. A blocked person's existing sessions stop working and they cannot sign in again until you choose Unblock. That popover also has Resend invite, Copy login link and Unlink account.
How to check it worked
External Portals → Overview: Exposed documents, External groups and Portal users are above zero. The amber "Portal isn't reachable yet." box is gone.
The first customer's status in Users changes from Pending to Verified once they sign in. With a directory set up it also shows CRM linked.
Your read-only preview (step 8) shows exactly the items, rows and columns you intended. Check a table with two different customers.
Undo / what can go wrong
Problem | Cause and fix |
|---|---|
Customer signs in and sees "Nothing has been shared with you yet." | They are in no group, or the group has no right on a published item. Add them to the group in Users, and check step 3 |
A table shows an error instead of rows | No Row filter and no submitter column. Set one in step 4 |
A new column shows up empty or missing for customers | The table is closed for customers (step 5). Share the column in Column visibility |
"Public App URL is not configured" or "Check SMTP configuration" | Email or public address missing. Ask your administrator (callout above) |
"Rate limited" on invite | Five emails per address per hour. Wait and try again |
A customer you did not invite has an account | Anyone can create an empty account by signing in; it has no access without a group. If it does have a group, Users can self-register without a pre-created account is on. Switch to Invite-only, then review Users |
Wrong person invited | Use Delete user, then invite the right address |
Unpublishing an item (Publish in the external portal off) hides it at once. Nothing you do on this page changes your team's own access.
Security notes
Review Users whenever someone leaves a customer company. Use Delete user or block them.
Sign out on all devices if a sign-in email was forwarded. Reusable links work on any device until they expire (72 hours by default; configurable under Sign-in email).
Related
Business and integrator guide and platform concepts: depth.