Overview
The client portal is a separate branded interface where your clients can log in to view project status, read and post comments, track milestones, and approve work — without seeing your internal financials, cost rates, or time entries. Account managers and project managers control exactly which projects each client contact can access and what actions they can take.
Give a Client Access to the Portal
There is no invite to send and nothing emails the client: the Hub Client Portal has no Invite Client User control and no Send Invite button, and there is no invitation email and no invite to resend. An active customer contact signs in themselves.
- Open the client's company in the Hub Portal (the client's Hub Portal tab in CRM).
- Click Add Portal User.
- Enter the client's email address and name, and pick their Portal role — Viewer, User, or Admin.
- Save, then tell the client to open your branded client portal (the Hub Client Portal, served at
app.theonestack.comor your MSP's custom domain) and click Email me a sign-in link instead — or to sign in with their password, or with Continue with Microsoft 365 if you enabled it for their organization.
Their session lasts 7 days before requiring a new login.
What Clients Can See
Depending on the permissions you set, clients can:
- View — see project status, task lists, milestone status, and hill charts.
- Comment — post comments on project updates.
- Approve — approve milestones and documents submitted for their sign-off.
Clients never see: budget figures, time entries, cost rates, team member cost data, or internal comments marked as internal.
Manage Portal Users
To review, update, or deactivate client access:
- Open the client's company in the Hub Portal (the client's Hub Portal tab in CRM).
- Find the user by name or email.
- Update their Portal role, or Deactivate them to revoke their access entirely.
There is no invite to resend: the portal never emails an invitation, and no screen offers a Resend Invite action. If a client cannot get in, check that their email address is on an active portal user record, then have them use Email me a sign-in link instead on the portal sign-in page — the sign-in link they request themselves is the only email the portal sends them.
Client-Submitted Intake Requests
Clients can submit requests through intake forms you publish — for example, a new project request or a change request form.
To set up an intake form for clients:
- Go to Projects > Intake > Forms.
- Click New Form and build the form fields.
- Set the form destination: submissions can create a project automatically or land as pending requests for your team to review.
- Publish the form — it gets a shareable URL you can send to clients or embed on a website.
Client submissions arrive under Intake > Requests. Review and approve or reject each request from there.
Client Approvals
When you submit a milestone or document for client approval, the client sees a pending approval in their portal.
- Inside the project, open a milestone or document.
- Click Request Approval.
- The client receives a notification in the portal.
- They click the item, review it, and click Approve or Request Changes.
Approvals are logged with a timestamp and the approver's identity.
Portal Comments and Updates
Within the portal, clients can read project updates your team has posted and reply with comments. These comments are visible to your team in the main Projects interface under the project's updates feed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a client see all projects at my organization or only the ones I share?
Only the projects explicitly shared with them when you granted them access. They cannot discover other projects on their own.
What if a client needs access to a new project after you first granted them access?
Open the client's Hub Portal tab in CRM, update their portal access, and save.
Can I have clients from different companies in the same portal?
Each client portal user is scoped to their own client ID. Clients only see their own projects and cannot see projects belonging to other clients.