The customer portal is what your customers see when they sign in to your Avaza account. You invite a contact at a customer's company and choose their roles. With the right roles, the contact can work on project tasks with you and approve your timesheets. They can also see all their estimates and invoices. They only see what their roles allow.
Invite a customer contact
Administrators, Finance Managers, Portfolio Managers and Project Managers can invite contacts.
Open Contacts and go to the Company Contacts tab. Click Add Contact, or click an existing contact to give them access.
Choose the Company, and enter the person's Email Address, First Name and Last Name.
Under Assign Roles, tick the roles they need (see below). A contact with no roles can't sign in.
To add them to projects now, pick the projects in Add to specific projects. For an existing contact, use the Project Membership tab. Only Administrators, Finance Managers and Portfolio Managers see these options.
Leave Send Email Invite to User ticked and click Save.
To accept, your customer sets a password or uses an Avaza login they already have. If the invitation doesn't arrive, see invitations not received. You can also require multi-factor authentication for external contacts.
Choose what they can do
Role | What your customer can do | In their left menu | Uses a licence |
|---|---|---|---|
Project Collaborator | Open the projects they're a member of, and work on tasks there | Projects, My Tasks | No |
Timesheet/Expense User | Log time and expenses on their projects | Timesheets, Expenses | Yes |
Timesheet Approver | Approve or reject time on projects where they're an approver | Timesheet Approvals | No |
Customer Finances | See their company's estimates and invoices, approve estimates and pay online | Quotes/Estimates, Invoices, Bills | No |
Scheduling User | Be booked in resource scheduling and see their bookings | My Schedule | Yes |
Chat User | Reply to direct messages and join the channels you add them to | Chat | No |
Only Administrators can give the Timesheet Approver and Customer Finances roles. Other users see these roles greyed out. Customer Finances is only for external contacts. Management roles such as Project Manager aren't available to external contacts. A role that uses a licence counts as soon as you save it. See managing users and licences.
If you've switched off a module for the account, such as estimates, customers don't see it either.
Projects and tasks
A Project Collaborator only sees the projects you've made them a member of. Avaza doesn't check which company a project is for, so only add contacts to their own company's projects. You can add them with Add to specific projects, on the Project Membership tab of their contact, or with Add People in the project's settings.
In those projects, they can:
- view tasks and subtasks
- comment
- follow tasks
- be assigned tasks.
The project's task permissions decide the rest: Create, Update, Delete and Comment. See collaborating with customers on tasks. In Reports, they also get a task list report for their projects.
To keep work within your team:
- Set a task to Team Only to hide it completely. See hiding tasks.
- Tick Post as Internal Note to hide one comment. See task discussions.
- Make custom fields Internal to hide them from customers.
To let your customer approve your time, give them the Timesheet Approver role. Then, on the project's Members tab, tick Project Timesheet approver? for them. See timesheet approvals.
Estimates, invoices and payments
With the Customer Finances role, your customer can see everything you've issued to their company:
- Quotes/Estimates has two lists: Pending Estimates (sent or expired) and Accepted / Rejected Estimates. When your customer opens an estimate, they see the online estimate with the PDF, Approve and Reject buttons. See how customers approve estimates.
- Invoices has two lists, each with totals: Outstanding Invoices and Paid Invoices. Overdue invoices show as Late. When your customer opens an invoice, they see the online invoice with a PDF button. If you take online payments, it also has a Pay Now button. See online payments.
- Bills lists the bills you've recorded from their company, if the company is also one of your suppliers. The page is in their menu even when it's empty.
Every list has a search box. The pending and outstanding lists also have a status filter. Drafts and void invoices aren't listed. Retainer invoices and credit notes aren't listed either, so your customer opens them from your emails. Customers don't have a dashboard. The Customer Dashboard report is for your team.
What customers never see
- Other companies' estimates and invoices.
- Projects they aren't a member of.
- Contacts, Settings and your finance reports.
- Team Only tasks, internal notes and internal custom fields.
- Your rates, costs, project budgets and billing settings.
- Other people's timesheets, apart from the time they approve.
Remove access
- One role: untick it on their contact record.
- One project: on their Project Membership tab, disable or remove their access. See project membership.
- Everything: click ⋮ › Archive in their row on the Company Contacts tab. Only Administrators can archive contacts. After that, the person can't sign in any more and their licences are freed. Their comments and history stay in Avaza. See archiving users.
Delete a contact only if they have no history in Avaza. See managing contacts.