---
title: "The client portal"
slug: portal/overview
url: https://projectri.com/docs/portal/overview
section: portal
audience: portal
app_route: "/portal"
mobile: "/(portal)/(tabs)"
updated: 2026-09-08
source: Projectri documentation
---

# The client portal

Your own view of the work your agency is doing for you — projects, requests, support tickets, quotes and invoices, in one place with your own login.

![The client portal](https://projectri.com/docs-shots/portal-overview.png)

## What it is

The client portal is where you see the work being done for you, without an
account in your supplier's workspace and without seeing anything they have not
published to you. The Overview screen is its front page: a greeting, a row of
counts, anything the team is waiting on you for, your open tickets, and the
milestones coming up next.

## How to get there

Sign in at `/portal/login`. If your supplier has set up their own domain for the
portal, the address will be theirs — something like `portal.theiragency.com` —
and the portal is served at the root of it. On that domain nothing but the
portal exists; any other address returns "Not found".

What you can see depends on which kind of contact you are. Your role is shown
under your name at the bottom of the sidebar:

- **Primary contact** — everything below, and the only role that can accept or
  decline a quote or a change order.
- **Billing contact** — everything a primary contact sees, except signing a
  quote.
- **Technical contact** — projects, requests and support. No invoices, quotes,
  change orders or retainer balance.
- **View only** — the same screens as a technical contact, but read-only. You
  cannot raise a ticket, reply, upload a file, or approve anything.

The money screens are not hidden with a message; they are absent from the
sidebar entirely. Your project team decides which contact each person is.

## How to use it

### Read the overview

1. Sign in. The page opens on **Overview**.
2. The counts at the top are open tickets, tickets in progress, and how many
   projects have been shared with you. A fourth count, unpaid invoices, appears
   only if your role includes invoices.
3. Anything the team needs *from you* sits above everything else, under a
   heading that names how many are overdue. **See all** opens the full list.
4. Under that, your five most recently updated open tickets, then up to five
   upcoming milestones with their dates.

### Move around

1. The sidebar is the whole portal: Overview, Help, Support, Requests,
   Projects, and — when your role includes them — Invoices, Quotes, Change
   orders and Retainer.
2. The block at the top of the sidebar names the company whose portal this is.
   If you are also signed in to a workspace in the same browser, clicking it
   offers a way across.
3. The menu on your name at the bottom holds the light/dark switch and **Sign
   out**.

### Turn on notifications

1. Open the menu on your name at the bottom of the sidebar.
2. Choose **Turn on notifications** and accept your browser's prompt.
3. The row only appears while it can still work. Once you have accepted, or
   once you have refused in the browser, it disappears — a refusal cannot be
   asked again from the page, only reset in your browser's own site settings.

### Read the bell

1. The bell in the header holds replies to your tickets, status changes, and
   new invoices where your role includes them.
2. It refreshes about once a minute, and immediately when you come back to the
   tab. It pauses while the tab is hidden.
3. Each notification carries a link to the thing it is about.

## What it affects

- **Signing out here signs you out of the portal only.** If you also have a
  workspace login in the same browser, that session is untouched. The two are
  independent by design.
- **Signing out unregisters this browser from notifications**, so a shared
  machine stops receiving replies to your tickets.
- **What the bell tells you is scoped the same way the screens are.** You are
  never notified about an invoice you cannot open — a contact without invoice
  access is left out of that fan-out entirely, because the notification carries
  the amount. Ticket notifications go to every active contact at your company,
  not only the person who raised the ticket, so a colleague can pick one up
  while you are away.
- **Your session lasts seven days.** Asking for a password reset ends every
  live session immediately, before the email is even opened.

## On mobile

There is a phone app, and the portal is one of the two things it can be. Sign in
with your portal address and password on the app's ordinary sign-in screen — it
tries a workspace account first and falls through to the portal — and you land
on a six-tab bar: Overview, Support, Inbox, Projects, Invoices and Account, with
a **New ticket** button in the centre. Invoices only appears if your role
includes it, and the centre button is absent if you are view-only.

The portal on the web is also usable on a phone browser. Below about 880 pixels
wide the sidebar collapses behind a menu button in the header.

## Limits and gotchas

> [!NOTE]
> A project you have not been given access to does not appear, and that is the
> default rather than a fault. Access is granted project by project, and a
> contact with no grants sees an empty Projects list.

- The portal is deliberately not indexed by search engines, and a custom domain
  serves nothing but the portal.
- Each contact login is separate. If you are a contact for more than one client
  of the same supplier, there is no way to hop between them without signing in
  again.
- Notification history and the bell are the same records the phone push comes
  from, so the two never disagree — but they are only written for events that
  happen after your account becomes active.

## Related

- [Signing in](/docs/portal/login) — the login screen, and what happens when it refuses you.
- [Requests](/docs/portal/tasks) — the things the team needs from you.
- [Support tickets](/docs/portal/tickets) — raising and following an issue.
- [Help centre](/docs/portal/help) — the articles your supplier has published to you.

## Related

- [Signing in](https://projectri.com/docs/portal/login.md): The portal sign-in screen — a separate login from your supplier's workspace, with its own password and its own session.
- [Requests](https://projectri.com/docs/portal/tasks.md): The things your supplier needs from you — a document, an approval, an answer — with due dates, and a list of what you have already sent.
- [Support tickets](https://projectri.com/docs/portal/tickets.md): Raise a support ticket with screenshots or a recording, and follow every ticket your company has open with this supplier.
- [Projects](https://projectri.com/docs/portal/projects.md): The projects your team has shared with you, each with a progress bar, and a badge when a milestone is waiting on your sign-off.
- [Help centre](https://projectri.com/docs/portal/help.md): The articles your supplier has published to customers, searchable, with a one-press route to a ticket when nothing answers your question.
