How to connect subcontractor and customer portals
Your subcontractors and clients get their own view of your jobs through a portal, and you are the one who opens that door. They send you a linking code, you enter it, and then you decide project by project what each of them can see. Being linked and being shared are two different things, and knowing the difference saves a lot of "why can't I see it" emails.
- Where it lives
- Connections in the sidebar, under Linked Portals.
- Who does the linking
- You. They supply a code, you enter it.
- What a link gives them
- An account connection, not your projects.
- What shares the work
- Sharing each project, one at a time.
Before you start
Linking takes under a minute once these are true:
- The customer or trade partner already exists as a record in Sync.
- They have a Sync account of their own, portal or full.
- They have sent you their linking code.
- You know which of their projects they should see.
Create the record first
A portal attaches to a record you already hold. A customer portal attaches to a customer, a subcontractor portal to a trade partner. If that record does not exist, there is nothing for the link to hang on and it will not complete.
Sync says so on the page, and gives you the two shortcuts you need: Create a customer and Create a supplier, with "then return here".
Ask them for their code
Every Sync account has a linking code, in the form CQZF-IAWS-UMJ2. They find it in their own account and send it to you.
Where they find it depends on what kind of account they have. Portal accounts keep it under Account, which opens on Linked Portals with the code at the top. Both portal guides cover their half of this: the subcontractor linking code guide and the customer portal tour.
It is not a password, but it is not for publishing either. Treat it like a bank sort code.
Open Connections
Connections sits in the lower group of the sidebar and has two tabs. Linked Portals is the one you want. The table lists every portal attached to your account, with its type, the record it is attached to and when it was linked.
Any linked customer/subcontractor portals are displayed here.
Please note that the customer or subcontractor you're linking to must already exist so that the portal can be attached to it.
Entity does not already exist? Create a customer or Create a supplier then return here.
Link a new portalEnter the linking code
Press Link a new portal. A drawer opens with one field and, deliberately, no save button.
Type or paste the code and move focus out of the field. Sync checks it against the server there and then, and answers underneath.
Any linked customer/subcontractor portals are displayed here.
Link a new portalRead what it tells you
Three answers come back other than success, and each means something different.
The code is wrong, mistyped, or it belongs to an account that has since changed. Ask them to read it back to you from their own Account page.
You are done. Close the drawer and look for them in the table.
It tells you to restore the link rather than create a new one, which is exactly right. Close the drawer and use Restore on their row.
Check the new link
A successful link appears in the table as Active, with the portal's name, its type, the record it attached to and today's date.
Check the Portal Type and Linked Record columns rather than just the name. Type tells you whether you have connected a customer or a subcontractor, and Linked Record confirms which of your records it landed on, which matters if you hold two similarly named companies.
Open the shared content view
Press View on a portal's row. This is the screen that decides what they can actually see, and it is worth understanding properly.
It lists every project associated with that record, each with a Share status of ACTIVE or UNSHARED, and filters for status, reference, name and project lead.
Projects associated with this customer are displayed below.
Share a project
Press Share on an unshared row. Sync confirms what it is about to do, naming both the project and the portal, and once you accept the row turns ACTIVE and the action becomes Revoke.
That confirmation is worth reading rather than clicking through. It is the moment a client gains sight of a job, including its documents, its log entries and who has been on site.
How subcontractors differ
The same screen behaves differently for a trade partner, and the help text at the top says so. For a customer it reads "Projects associated with this customer". For a trade partner it reads "Projects linked to this trade partner, including those with purchase orders and those shared with this portal".
Stop sharing one project
Revoke on a project row withdraws that one job, and nothing else. The portal link stays, every other shared project stays, and the row returns to UNSHARED so you can share it again later.
This is the right tool when a job finishes, or when a supplier comes off one project but stays on others. Revoking the whole portal link for that would be a much bigger hammer than the job needs.
See what they see
Sharing a project does not hand over everything on it. Each side gets a view built for them, and the two portal guides set out exactly what that is.
For a client, that is projects, engineers and credentials, log entries, documents, drawings and the site induction: a tour of the Customer Portal. For a subcontractor it is the shared project, site check-in, inductions and near miss reporting: how to work on a project.
Document visibility is a separate control again, set per document when you file it.
Revoke a portal link
Revoke on the Linked Portals row cuts the whole connection. Sync asks you to confirm first.
It does not delete anything. The row stays in the table with a Revoked status, and the only action left against it becomes Restore. Nobody has to dig out the linking code again.
Restore a revoked link
Restore, then confirm, and the link is Active again.
Sync pushes you towards this rather than letting you start over. Paste the same code into Link a new portal while a revoked link exists and it refuses, saying the portal is already linked but revoked, and to restore it instead. That is a sensible guard: a second link to the same company would be a mess to unpick.
Find the record behind a portal
The Linked Record column is a link. It takes you to the customer or trade partner record the portal is attached to, and the shared content screen carries the same shortcut as View customer or View trade partner.
Useful when a portal query turns out to be a records query: expired insurance, the wrong payment terms, or a contact who has left.
Invite a shared user
The other tab on Connections, Shared Users, does something different. It invites an individual who already belongs to a different Sync account, rather than connecting a company.
Think of a client-side project manager who needs to work inside your account rather than look at it through a portal. Enter their email, pick a starting role, and send. They appear under Members with their original tenancy shown beside them.
Use this to invite someone who already belongs to another Sync account, not to add staff for this company. When they accept, they count toward this company's user limit and can increase subscription cost. The role you choose here is their starting role; manage full permissions in Account → Users.
Shared users or your own staff
Getting this wrong is the most common mistake on the page, so the app spells it out: Shared Users is "not to add staff for this company".
Account, then Users. Full details, permissions and PO limits, covered in the users and permissions guide.
Connections, then Shared Users. The role you pick is only their starting role, and you manage them from Account afterwards like anyone else.
Either way they count toward your user limit and may change your subscription cost, which is the one commercial consequence on this page.
What you can and cannot do
- Link as many customer and subcontractor portals as you work with.
- See both kinds in one list, told apart by the Portal Type column.
- Decide project by project what each portal can see.
- Share a project with a customer and unshare it again later.
- Revoke a portal link without losing the record of it.
- Restore a revoked link without asking for the code again.
- Jump from a portal straight to the customer or trade partner record behind it.
- Link to a portal that has no customer or trade partner record in your account yet.
- Make the link from their end. They supply the code; you enter it.
- Give a portal everything at once. Projects are shared individually.
- Create a new link for a portal you previously revoked. Restore it instead.
- Use Shared Users to add your own staff. That is Account, then Users.
Common issues
It does not need one. Enter the code and move focus out of the field, and Sync checks it against the server, showing the result underneath.
The customer or trade partner has to exist in your account first, so the portal has something to attach to. The drawer links straight to Create a customer and Create a supplier for this reason.
Being linked is not the same as being shared. Open the portal from Linked Portals, find the project, and check its share status. Unshared is the default for a customer.
That is expected. For a trade partner the list includes projects with purchase orders raised against them, as well as anything shared explicitly.
Nothing is lost. The row stays with a Revoked status and a Restore action, and restoring takes one confirmation.
Portal accounts keep it under Account rather than Connections, because there is only ever one side of it to manage.
Connection checklist
A connection that will not generate questions has:
- The customer or trade partner record exists before you try to link.
- The linking code came from them, not from a guess at the format.
- The new row shows Active, with the right Portal Type.
- Linked Record points at the record you expected.
- Every project they should see is shared, and nothing else is.
- Anyone from another Sync account is invited through Shared Users, not Users.
Summary
To connect a portal to your account:
- 1Create the customer or trade partner record if it does not exist.
- 2Ask them for the linking code from their own account.
- 3Open Connections, then Linked Portals, then Link a new portal.
- 4Enter the code and let Sync check it.
- 5Open the new link with View to reach its project list.
- 6Share the projects they should see, one at a time.
- 7Revoke the whole link, or a single project share, whenever that changes.
Two controls, used well, cover almost everything here. The link decides who is connected, and sharing decides what they see. Keep the second one tight and the portal stops being a thing you worry about giving people access to.