Inviting clients to the portal

The client portal gives your client a secure place to follow their case, download what you’ve shared and message you, instead of email attachments and texts.

Sending an invitation

Open the case and choose Invite Client in the case header. (Once a client has access, this becomes Client access, with Invite another client.) You can also invite a client-role contact from Contacts with Invite to portal.
Under Who are you inviting?, pick one of the case’s client contacts, or enter the details manually.
Enter the Client’s name and Their email address. The name helps you check you’re inviting the right person; it isn’t sent to PIToolkit’s servers.
Choose Review invitation, check the summary, then Send invitation.

Your client gets an email sent by PIToolkit, with your business name in the subject, and a link to this case. The link works once, only for that email address, and expires after 14 days. Set your business name first, or the email goes out in PIToolkit’s name instead of yours.

You can’t invite a client to an archived case.

Verify your email address first. PIToolkit only sends invitations from accounts whose email address is confirmed. If yours isn’t, sending stops with “Verify your email to send invitations”, with a button to send yourself a new verification link. See Verifying your email address.

Pending invitations

An invitation that hasn’t been used shows on the contact as “Invitation sent · expires” with the date. There’s no resend button: while an invitation is still valid, inviting the same address to the same case again is refused, and the original link keeps working. See Invitation expired or missing.

Approving your client’s safety code

When your client accepts, their browser creates their own encryption keys. Before you share anything with them for the first time, PIToolkit shows you their safety code and asks you to Approve it.

Check it with your client by phone or in person, not by email. They’ll find the same code on their portal account page under Your safety code. If the codes match, what you share with them can be opened only by them and you. Until you approve, nothing is shared or sent to them.

You approve each client once, and it covers them on every case in your workspace. If a client’s key ever changes, you’ll see “This client’s key has changed” and nothing is shared until you check and choose Confirm new key. See Client safety codes and unverified messages.

Adding them to your contacts

When a client accepts, PIToolkit asks you on the Contacts page whether to add them to your contacts, link them to an existing contact, or, for a returning client, add their existing contact to this case. Nothing is added until you choose. See Reviewing clients who accepted an invitation.

What your client sees

Once they’ve accepted and you’ve approved their safety code, your client can:

see the case’s phase and progress, in client-friendly wording, and a timeline of updates (never your notes)
download reports you’ve published to them
view and download evidence you’ve shared with them
exchange secure messages with you

In their portal, the case appears by type and date, for example “Surveillance, opened” followed by the date you created it, not by the case name you gave it.

Reports and files you shared before a client accepted aren’t included automatically. On the case’s Client access card, use Re-share on their row to share them.

Client access status

The Client access card lists each client with their status: Active, Ends (with a date, after the case is closed), Ended or Revoked. “Has not finished setting up their portal keys” means they accepted but haven’t completed setup; nothing can be shared with them yet.

Ending a client’s access

Choose End access on their row and confirm. They lose access to this case straight away, including their copy of your message history. Files they already downloaded can’t be taken back. On the Free plan, this frees their slot.

When you close a case, your client keeps access until the retention period you chose ends, and they’re emailed that date. See Creating and managing cases.

Returning clients: one account for every case

A client’s portal account isn’t tied to one case or one investigator. If a client you’ve worked with before accepts an invitation to another case, from you or another investigator who uses PIToolkit, they sign in to the same account and see all their cases together. Each case shows its own firm’s branding.

The Free plan limit

On the Free plan you can have up to 3 client portal accounts across your workspace. Invitations waiting to be used count, as well as clients with access. Inviting an existing client to another case doesn’t use another slot. At the limit, the invite dialog tells you so; conversations with existing clients carry on as normal.