The public portal

The public portal is a page for your project that needs no sign-in at all. It is how a worker registers for induction before their first day, how somebody at the gate signs in on a tablet, how a visitor finds the site's PPE requirements, and how anybody can reach the documents you have chosen to publish.

Everything on it is opt-in. A portal shows exactly what you have selected and nothing else, and it is off until you turn it on.

Two portals

There is an organisation portal and a project portal, and they do different jobs.

The organisation portal is your company's page: your logo, your cover photo, and your active projects, which somebody can browse as a list, as tiles, in detail or on a map. Completed, closed and archived projects are not on it.

The project portal is one job's page: the site's weather forecast, the induction entry point, your published documents, and the contact details you have set. Each project links from the organisation portal, and each has its own address you can hand out or put on a sign.

What a project portal carries

Induction registration. A worker registers themselves, with their details, tickets and acknowledgements, before they arrive. This is the portal's most useful page by a distance, because the alternative is a clipboard at the gate on the first morning. See Inductions.

The sign-in and sign-out kiosk. A tablet-optimised flow designed to sit at the gate, handling both inducted workers and visitors. It works by scanning as well as by typing.

Minimum PPE. The site's PPE requirements, drawn as the standard ISO 7010 mandatory-action signs rather than as a list, so it reads the same to somebody who does not read English comfortably.

Public documents. Whichever documents you have selected. Nothing is public by default and nothing becomes public because it was uploaded somewhere.

A contact form. Name, email, optional phone and a message, sent to the address you set. It is protected against bots, and it does not appear at all if you have not set an address for it, which is the right behaviour: a form nobody reads is worse than no form.

What it is not

The portal is not a way of giving somebody partial project access. There is no account, no sign-in and no personalisation on it, and it shows the same thing to everybody who opens it.

Anybody who needs to see their own work, respond to something, or read anything that is not deliberately published needs an invitation instead. See Inviting people to a project.

For a single document going to one person, a public document link with its own expiry is usually the better tool. The portal is for what should be permanently and openly available.

SettingsHost only

The tool is called Public Site, and it is configured at both levels.

Organisation, then Tools, then Public Site turns the organisation portal on or off, shows you its address, lets you select organisation-level documents to publish, and sets a contact email.

Project, then Tools, then Public Site does the same for one project, and adds the minimum PPE grid. Documents are selected from the project's own register.

Both pages show the portal's address, which is the thing to copy onto site signage, into an induction email or onto a QR code at the gate.

Two settings are worth deciding deliberately rather than accepting. Which documents are published, because the portal has no audience control and a document on it is a document anybody can find. And the contact address, because it will receive real enquiries from real people and needs to be somewhere somebody looks.

PermissionsHost only

Configuring the portal is a host action, under Tools, and needs the permission to manage tool settings. In most organisations that means an administrator or whoever set the project up.

Nobody needs any permission to read a portal, which is the entire point of it. That cuts both ways, so it is worth someone other than its author opening a portal before it is advertised, with fresh eyes on what is actually published.