This article walks through the technical steps to get your client portal up and running: prerequisites, creating users, configuring permissions, and testing the experience before inviting real clients.
Prerequisites
Before inviting clients to the portal, make sure you have:
Branding configured. Your logo, colors, and app name should be set up so clients see your MSP's brand, not Strategy Overview.
Custom domain set up (recommended). Clients should access the platform at a URL like app.yourmsp.com. See the Custom Domain and Email article for setup steps.
Custom email configured (recommended). Invitation and password reset emails should come from your MSP, not Strategy Overview.
Creating client portal users
Follow these steps to create a portal account for a client:
Go to Settings > Users > Add User
Set the role to External User - Editor or External User - Read Only
External User - Editor: can collaborate on data and has edit access
External User - Read Only: can only view Reports and data
Assign them to specific companies only (not groups)
Configure their modules. Each module has a Show checkbox that controls whether the user can access it. You can also customize the Label column to change what your client sees.
We recommend starting with Strategy and Plan, and optionally adding Tickets, Office365, and Contacts
If the client has multiple companies, you can also enable the Companies module
Example label changes: rename "Office365" to "M365" or "External Content" to "Knowledge Base"
Configure ticket visibility. Under the module list, there is a Modules Settings section with a "Can see their own tickets only" checkbox.
Enable this to restrict the user to seeing only tickets where they are the contact, rather than all tickets for the company
This is ideal for individual users at a client
For primary contacts or IT directors who need visibility into all company tickets, leave this unchecked
Save and send the invitation
Configuring ticket permissions
If you're exposing the Tickets module to portal users, make sure your tickets integration is configured correctly:
Check Board permissions by roles and companies
Check Field permissions by roles
Check Note permissions by roles
These settings control what ticket data your external users can see and interact with.
Hiding internal Report content
Not everything in a Report is meant for clients. Each Part in a Report (Assessment, Budget, Roadmap, custom sections, etc.) has an Internal checkbox. When checked, that Part is hidden from external users viewing the Report through the portal. This lets you keep internal-only content in the same Report without needing a separate version for clients.
To mark a Part as internal, open the Report in Build Mode, click the Part settings, and check the Internal box. You can toggle this on or off per Part, per Report, so different clients can see different content depending on what's relevant.
Testing the portal experience
Before inviting real clients:
Create a test user with the External User - Editor role using your personal email address
Assign them to a test company
Log in as the test user
Verify they see only what you want them to see
Check that any Parts marked as Internal are hidden from the test user's view
Rolling out to clients
Start with a small batch of users first. Send invites while logged into your branded tenant so the invitation emails come from your domain.
Once you're confident the experience is right, expand to the rest of your client base. There's no need to invite everyone at once.