Finding your way around

This page explains the parts of the Client Portal screen: the menu, your user card, the page headers and what you see on a phone. It also explains what happens when you do not have access to a page. It is for everyone who uses the portal.

The layout

After you sign in, the screen has two parts. The menu is on the left. The page you are working on is on the right, and it scrolls on its own, so the menu stays in place.

The menu on a computer, with one group open.

The left menu

Brand block (top)

• Your company's logo. If your company has no logo, a small warehouse icon is shown instead.
• Your company name.
• The small caption Client Portal.

The menu items

The menu shows only the items you have access to. Items appear in this order. See View only and Administer access for the access names in the last column.

• The access that lets you create or change something also lets you see that area, so you do not need both. See View only and Administer access.
• The closed lists use the same access as the open lists. There is no separate access for closed orders.
• Inventory sits inside the Reports group but needs View Inventory. The three reports need View reports. You can therefore see a Reports group that contains only Inventory, or only the three reports.
• There is no menu item for creating things. The New ... buttons are on the lists and on the Dashboard.

How the groups open and close

• All groups start closed. Group names are small, often in capital letters, with an arrow.
• Only one group is open at a time. Opening a group closes the one that was open. Click the open group again to close it.
• The group that holds the page you are on opens by itself, so the highlighted item is always visible.
• Dashboard and Invoices are not in a group; they open directly.
• The portal does not remember which groups you opened. They start closed on your next visit.

User card (bottom)

• A round badge with your initials.
• Your username.
• The Sign out icon. See Signing in and out.

On a phone or a narrow window

The portal on a phone.

• The left menu becomes a bar across the top. Your logo and your user card share one row. Only your initials and the Sign out icon remain; the caption Client Portal and your username are hidden.
• The menu becomes one strip of links that you scroll sideways. The group names are hidden and every link you can use is listed, so there is nothing to open or close.
• Pages use less space around their content.

Page headers

Most pages start with a header: a title, a short line under it that says what the page is for, and buttons on the right such as Refresh, New order or New product. On a narrow screen the buttons wrap onto the next line. Pages that open one record, such as a product or an order, also have a back button, for example Back to Products, that returns you to the list.

When a page is not available to you

The message for a page you cannot open.

Where you land after you sign in

• If your access includes View Dashboard, you land on the Dashboard.
• If it does not, the portal sends you to the first of these that you can open: Sales orders, Purchase orders, Inventory, Invoices, Inventory detail, Products, Customers, Vendors. The browser's Back button does not take you back to the page you were sent away from.
• If your user has no access to anything, you land on a page that only says You don't have access to this section. and the menu is empty. Ask your warehouse to give you access.
• An address inside the portal that does not exist also takes you to this starting page.

Related pages

• View only and Administer access
• Searching, filtering and exporting lists