Customer portal
What this page is — the signed-in place where your customers see and act on the documents they are party to, and how you give them access.
What it is for — so customers retrieve, sign and respond to their own documents without asking you.
The problem it solves — "can you resend the agreement?" lands in your inbox again and again, for documents the customer could fetch themselves.
Route: your organisation's customer-facing site (subdomain or custom papers domain) · Permissions: Manage which customers can access the Papers document portal for a project (enroll by email, suspend/remove, send invitations). to enrol; Browse & view Papers customer-portal pages. to author portal pages; Papers module limits, defaults, integrations and signature-provider toggles. for portal brand and menu
1. What it is
A Papers customer is an existing project customer, the same identity Orbit uses elsewhere, enrolled for Papers on a project. Once signed in, they see every document where they are a party. They act on those documents with the same engine that powers the magic-link deal room and the signing ceremony.
| Customer portal | Counterparty portal | Public library | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sign-in | Customer account | None — a link | None |
| Documents | All where they are a party | One | Published ones only |
| Signing | Inline, using their session | Separate emailed link with a code | — |
| Lasts | Until suspended or removed | Until the link expires | Until unpublished |
| Appearance | Pages you design | Fixed | Fixed |
2. Why you would use it
- "Can you resend the agreement?" stops reaching your inbox. Customers download their own copies at any hour.
- Long relationships stay organised. A customer with an MSA, six statements of work and three amendments sees them together rather than as links scattered over two years of email.
- Signing gets faster. A signed-in customer signs inline, without a separate invitation and one-time code.
- It looks like your business. The pages are built in Experience Manager with your wording and brand.
3. Step by step
Enrolling a customer
- Open Settings → Papers → Customers for the project. See customers.
- Pick someone from the enrollable list — people already known to your organisation who are not yet members of this project — or enrol by email.
- Enrol. An invitation email (template
PAPERS_CUSTOMER_INVITE) is sent. If it fails, enrolment still stands; resend from the same screen. - Make sure the customer is a party on the documents they should see. Parties are matched by their customer identity, or by email when the party row has none.
Managing access
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Suspend | Sign-in keeps working for other modules, but Papers documents are no longer served |
| Remove | Takes them off the project. They can be enrolled again later from the same picker |
| Resend invitation | Sends the invite email again |
4. Field reference — what a signed-in customer can do
| Capability | Scope and rule |
|---|---|
| List documents | Only documents where they are a party |
| Open a document | The render with external and counterparty redactions applied. If the redactions cannot be read, the document is withheld |
| Download | Where the type and confidentiality allow it |
| Obligations | Only obligations owned by their party, or with no owner. Obligations owned by your people stay hidden |
| Sign / decline | Inline, authenticated by their session rather than an email code |
| Comment, suggest an edit, send back | Same effects as the counterparty portal |
| Accept | Same as the deal room — the document moves on to signing and the owner is notified |
Enrolment checks fail with plain messages: "project_id and email are required" when the email is missing.
5. Building the portal pages
The portal is assembled in Experience Manager (/org/experience) from six Papers blocks:
| Block family | Gives the customer |
|---|---|
| Document list | Their documents, with state and type |
| Document detail | Reading, download, signing, and the negotiation tabs — comment, suggest, send back, accept |
| Obligations | Their obligations |
All actions live inside the document detail block. If signing seems to be missing, check that the page uses document detail — do not look for a separate signing block.
A custom papers domain is an alias for your tenant subdomain and behaves identically: both serve the portal.
6. Worked example
Brightline Logistics is a customer on Gatiro's Enterprise Accounts project.
- The account manager enrols
[email protected], and the invite arrives. - Brightline is already a counterparty party on MSA-2025-017 and on two statements of work. Their portal lists all three.
- SOW-3 is out for signature. The Brightline ops director opens it in the portal, reviews it and signs inline. There is no separate email and no code, because they are already signed in.
- The MSA's obligations tab shows Quarterly service review — 30 June, owned by Brightline. Gatiro's internal Renewal decision obligation is owned by their own manager, so it is not shown.
- Brightline sends SOW-4 back with a suggestion on the rate card. Gatiro's document gains a counterparty round version, exactly as if it came from the deal room.
- When the contract ends, the account manager suspends Brightline. The portal stops serving their documents, but the history remains on Gatiro's side.
7. The admin contract
| What must be configured | Otherwise |
|---|---|
The Papers package is enabled, with the papers portal surface | No portal pages exist |
| Portal pages authored in Experience Manager | The site has no Papers pages to show |
| The customer is enrolled and named as a party | They sign in and see an empty list |
| Redaction layers for external audiences, where needed | Customers see the full text |
| Outbound email | Invites fail. Enrolment still works; share the site address yourself |
8. Downstream
- Everything a customer does is recorded in the document's Activity, marked as coming from the customer portal. Redacted views are logged too.
- Views from the customer portal do not increase a distribution's view counter. That counter belongs to tokenised links. Use Activity instead.
- Suggestions and send-backs trigger the same rounds, material-change re-approval and AI auto-runs as the deal room.
9. Don't confuse this with…
| Counterparty portal | One document, no account |
| Public library | The same documents for everyone |
| Embedded views | Pieces of Papers inside someone else's site |
| Counterparties settings | Your directory of other parties — not portal access |
10. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| A customer signs in and sees nothing | Not a party on any document, or their access is suspended |
| A document is visible to the wrong contact | The party row's email matches that contact — correct the party |
| An obligation is missing | It is owned by an internal party (§4) |
| Signing is not offered | The document is not out for signature, or the page lacks the document detail block |
| The portal looks unbranded | Pages, brand and menu have not been authored in Experience Manager |
| View counts do not rise | Expected for signed-in views (§8) |