How to set up a client or partner portal

A portal is a private, branded login where one client or partner sees only what you have shared with them: their forms, documents, invoices, work-order progress, meeting booking and document signing, all in one place at portal.trustpager.com. Each portal is themed to your company, and members only ever see records you explicitly share into their portal.

There are two kinds of portal, created from two different places:

• Client portals are created from an opportunity, for a client you are working with.
• Partner portals are created from a referrer in the referral system, for a referral or affiliate partner. They carry a unique Referrals and Commissions dashboard, and are covered in their own section below.

The fastest way: ask your TrustPager AI

If you have TrustPager connected to Claude, the quickest way to stand up a portal is to ask in plain English. For example:

"Create a portal for [the opportunity], share its proposal, invoice and intake form into it, and invite [client email] as a member."

It will create the portal, attach those records, and send the member their invite to log in.

Setting up a client portal by hand

Every opportunity has a Manage Portal control. From there:

• Create Portal picks a template (the design) and creates this opportunity's portal.
• Add to Portal ticks exactly what the member can see: documents, invoices, work orders, forms, scheduling, files, notepads, and notepad pages.
• Invite Members adds the people who can log in, either by picking the opportunity's contacts or typing any email. Each person gets an email branded in your company's colours inviting them to your portal.
• Preview Portal opens the portal exactly as a member sees it, visible only to your workspace, so you can check it before inviting anyone.

Preview a portal from the opportunity or contact record

You no longer need to open the portal editor to see what a client sees. Any opportunity or contact page surfaces a one-click preview directly from the record.

• From an opportunity: open the opportunity at app.trustpager.com/crm/opportunities, then find the Portals card. Each portal row shows a View button (eye icon) next to Edit. Click it and the portal opens in a new tab, exactly as the client sees it: their progress tracker, shared forms, uploads, and any pages you have shared.
• From a contact: open the contact at app.trustpager.com/crm/contacts and look for the Portals card in the right sidebar, below Quick Links. Because portals attach to opportunities, this card shows one row for every portal linked to that contact's related opportunities. Each row has the same View and Edit buttons, plus Add Portal.

The preview is workspace-only. Your client is not notified when you open it, and it does not change anything in their portal. The View button is available to all team members, including read-only users. Edit and Add Portal still require write permission.

Designing the look (templates)

Client portal templates are built at app.trustpager.com/operations/portals. A template has these modes:

• Settings: branding (logo, colours, a portal icon), a short portal description shown in the invite email and on the welcome page, and your contact details.
• Home: the welcome content members land on (a rich editor), plus which blocks show.
• Tools: the schedulers and forms members can use.
• Pages: published notepad folders that appear as top-menu pages.

Every portal you create from a template inherits its design, and you can still customise an individual portal after it is created, both its design and the exact records shared into it. Partner portal templates are managed separately, inside the referral system (see below), so they never clutter this list.

Data Management

The Data Management section of the portal builder (under Settings) is where you control what content flows into each portal. It has two separate containers, each solving a different problem.

Container 1: Auto-add Opportunity Content into Instance

This container controls how the linked opportunity's records flow into the portal. For each content type, you choose one of three modes:

• Off: this type is fully protected. Nothing from the opportunity is ever shared or visible, no matter what.
• Everything: every record of this type linked to the opportunity is automatically added to the portal the moment it exists. No manual sharing needed.
• Only selected: you choose exactly which records to include. On a portal instance this means picking specific records by hand. On a template it acts as a design-time filter (for example, showing only work orders with a certain status).

The content types you can control here are: Work orders, Meeting minutes, Invoices, Documents to sign, Documents, Files, Bookings, Images, and Notepads.

You can configure these settings on the template (applies to all new portals built from it) or override them on a specific portal instance (just that opportunity's portal).

Container 2: Auto-add Template Content into Instance

This container attaches specific workspace resources to the template itself, so they appear automatically in every portal created from it. Unlike Container 1, which flows records in from the linked opportunity, these are resources you pick once at the template level:

• Signing document templates
• Document templates
• Files
• Images
• Notepads

Anything attached here is present in every instance from the start, before any opportunity-specific content is added. This is useful for standard materials that every client receives (a welcome pack, a standard contract, a resource guide) without having to attach them manually to each portal.

Notepads in both containers

Notepads appear in both containers, and they work differently in each. In Container 1, the control shares the notepads linked to the specific opportunity (the working notes your team keeps for that job). In Container 2, you attach a specific notepad from the workspace to the template so it appears in every portal instance. Both can be active at the same time.

Once notepads are enabled via Data Management, add the Notepads block to the portal home sidebar: in the portal builder, go to the Home tab, open the Add to Home Sidebar picker, and select Notepads from the Records & files group.

When a member opens the portal, a Notepads tab appears in the sidebar. A directory of cards shows each notepad's title and cover image. A single notepad opens straight into the editor view. If edit permission is on, members get a full rich-text editor: format text, add tables, insert links and images, and set a cover image. Edits autosave and are immediately visible to everyone the notepad is shared with. Members cannot create new notepads from the portal.

Partner and referral portals

A partner portal is the branded area a referral or affiliate partner signs in to, where they track the clients they have referred, their commission, and any materials you share with them. Partner portals live entirely inside the referral system, so they never appear in the general portal directory or clutter your client portals.

You manage them from a referrer's page at app.trustpager.com/growth/referrals. Open any referrer and you will see two separate cards:

• Referral link: a stable, public link the partner can share anywhere. Anyone who signs up through it is automatically credited to that partner. No login is needed.
• Partner portal: the partner's private, branded login. Create partner portal spins one up; Preview portal shows it as the partner sees it; Manage portal opens its Design, Shared items and Members; and Customize portal template opens the shared design.

Two ideas keep this simple across all your partners:

• One standardised design. Every partner portal is built from a single partner template you edit once, via the Partner portal design button on the Referrals page. Change it there and the design applies to new partner portals. A partner template adds a Referrals and commissions panel to the builder, where you switch the dashboard on and choose commission mode or discount mode.
• Per-partner customisation. Each partner's portal is its own instance. From Manage portal you can tweak that one partner's design, and on the Shared items tab choose exactly which workspace Files, Documents and Content pages that partner sees (for example their commission statements or co-branded materials). The Members tab invites the partner to sign in.

When a partner signs in they land on their Referrals and Commissions dashboard first: their referred clients, status of each, expected commission, a commission summary, and anything else you have shared with them.

Auto-fill in partner portals

When you attach a signing document template or document template as template content on a partner portal (Container 2), each instance renders its own copy of that document filled from two sources: the linked referrer contact ({{contact.*}} merge tokens) and the opportunity linked to that referrer ({{deal.*}} and {{deal.metadata.*}} tokens).

This means the partner receives a document already personalised with their own details and their linked opportunity's details, without any manual data entry.

Tip for admins: fill in the opportunity's data before the partner accesses the portal. A signing template with a merge field that has no matching data is blocked from sending until it is filled. This is intentional so partners never receive a half-blank document, but it means the opportunity needs to be populated first.

What happens when you invite someone

When you invite a person, TrustPager sends them an email branded in your company's logo and colours that says they have been invited to your portal, with a short description of what the portal is for and a button straight into it. What happens when they click depends on whether they already have a TrustPager login:

• New people set a password and accept the terms on a welcome page, then land straight in your portal.
• People with a half-finished invite (invited before but never set a password) get a fresh set-up link and finish the same way.
• People who already use TrustPager simply get access and sign in with their existing password, with no new password needed.

Everyone you invite is an external, portal-only login. They never join your workspace or see your CRM, only the records you share into their portal. The branded sign-in page lives at portal.trustpager.com, and each workspace has its own branded sign-in at portal.trustpager.com followed by your workspace name, so a returning member always sees your brand, not a generic page. In Invite Members, a person shows as "Invited, awaiting password setup" until they finish, then as "Active, can log in".

Collecting documents from clients

To collect a checklist of documents (for example a loan or onboarding pack), use a Form with a named file-upload field for each document. Clients upload each item, and their progress saves across multiple sessions. To track your review of each item, use Work Orders with your own statuses (for example Pending Review, Approved, Needs Resubmission). An automation can share the form into the portal when a deal reaches a stage, and an auto-queue can chase clients who have not finished.

What members see

Members log in at portal.trustpager.com and see a branded home page with a welcome message, anything that needs their attention, and their contacts on your team. The top menu and sidebar give them their Tools, Pages, shared records, and a Notepads tab if you have enabled it for their portal. They only ever see their own portal.

Signing documents inside the portal

You can surface a document for e-signing directly in a member's portal so they sign it under the Documents to sign tab, alongside their other portal items, without receiving a separate signing email. Turn on the Sign via Portal toggle in the Document Builder's Settings panel, choose a Portal Template, then click Portal to run the Send to Portal flow. See How to Send Documents for E-Signing for the full walkthrough including the API, MCP, and automation options.