Client Portal
The client portal is a branded space where your clients follow their work, approve quotes and ask questions. It carries your name, logo and colours, not Align's. Clients do not need an Align account or a password: each client signs in from a personal link you send them.
Each workspace has one portal, at its own address: https://<your-address>.portal.alignsoft.us.
Setting up the portal (admins)
Open Settings → Client Portal. Only workspace admins can see it.
Address
Enter the Portal address: the part before .portal.alignsoft.us. Use letters, numbers and hyphens. Some names, such as www, app, api and support, are reserved, and each address can belong to only one workspace. Choose carefully: the links you send point at this address.
Branding
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | The name in the portal header. Leave it blank to use your workspace name. |
| Logo URL | A link to your logo, shown beside the name. |
| Header colour | The colour of the portal header. Pick it or paste a hex value such as #2563eb. |
| Accent colour | Used to highlight items waiting for the client's approval. |
| Welcome message | A line of text at the top of the client's home page. |
Availability
| Status | What clients get |
|---|---|
| Draft — set it up privately | The address shows your branding, but no link works. |
| Active — client links work | Clients can sign in. |
| Disabled — every link refused | The address shows "Not found". |
How long a link stays valid can be 1 day, 7 days, 30 days or 90 days. A link is a credential, so shorter is safer; you can always send another.
Click Save. Until the portal is Active, the page reminds you that client links will not work yet.
Giving a client access
A client is a person in your workspace with the Client role (see Team and Roles). They see the same projects in the portal as they would in Align: projects where they are the Project Owner, and projects they have been given access to.
- Under Client access, choose the Client. Suspended or archived accounts cannot be chosen.
- Click Create link.
- Copy the link and send it to the client. Align shows it once and does not store it. If you lose it, create another.
Anyone holding the link can see that client's projects until it expires, so treat it like a password. Links you have issued lists each link with the client's name and email, when it expires and when it was last opened. Click Revoke to stop a link working before it expires.
Sharing files
Files stay private until you share them. On a project's Files tab, each file has an eye icon. Click it to let the client download that file from the portal; click it again to stop sharing.
What a client sees
The client opens their link, and the portal signs them in. A link that has expired or been revoked shows "This link is no longer valid. Ask your contact for a new one." A client who visits the address without a link is asked to open the link their contact sent.
Once signed in, the header shows your logo and name, with Feedback and Sign out buttons.
Home
- Your welcome message, if you set one.
- Waiting for your approval: shown only when something is waiting for them.
- Ask a question: see Asking questions.
- Their projects, each with its status. If nothing has been shared yet, the portal says so.
A project
Opening a project shows:
- The project's name, status and description, and a Visit link if the project has a production URL.
- Four figures: Open, In progress, Delivered over the last 30 days with the change from the previous 30 days, and Waiting on you with the age of the oldest item. Work whose delivery date Align cannot place precisely is counted separately and not included in the delivered figure.
- Milestone progress: how many items in each milestone have been delivered.
- Your approval turnaround: the median number of days the client took to approve and to decline quotes, once there are any.
- Download report: a weekly client report as a Markdown file the client can pass on.
- Approvals waiting on this project, with the same buttons as on the home page.
- Files you have shared.
- Milestones and Releases, with target or release dates and release notes.
- Work: the project's most recent entries (up to 200), each with its number, title and status. Entries waiting for the client's approval are marked Needs your approval.
The portal shows only what is listed here. It never shows your internal estimate ranges, margins, team or other clients.
Money
The portal shows one kind of money figure: the committed cost of an entry, the price the client is asked to approve. It appears on approval cards and in the Work list, in US dollars with cents, for example $24,789.76. Estimate ranges and internal cost are never shown, and the summary figures are counts, not money.
Approvals a client can give
A client approves or declines quotes: entries whose cost is waiting at the client stage of cost approval. Stages that belong to your team are never shown to them. (See Cost Management for how an entry reaches that stage.)
On each item under Waiting for your approval:
- Approve approves the quote in one click.
- Request a change asks the client what needs to change. They must write a short reason, then click Send. The quote is declined with that reason, so your team knows what to fix.
Align records the client as the person who approved or declined. If someone else acted on the item while the page was open, the portal says it was already actioned and refreshes.
Asking questions
The Ask a question box answers questions about anything the client can see in the portal: a cost, a date, a piece of work. Answers draw only on that client's projects. Press Enter to send and Shift + Enter for a new line.
The assistant can also approve or decline a quote when the client asks it to. It never acts on its own: it describes what it is about to do, and nothing happens until the client clicks Yes, do that. No thanks cancels. A confirmation expires after ten minutes.
Feedback about Align
The Feedback button in the portal header sends feedback about the portal software itself to the Align team at Forward Rise, not to your company. See Help and Feedback.