8 min read

Building Your First Portal

A step-by-step walkthrough of creating a complete client portal from scratch, including data setup, and customization.

The Scenario

You run a marketing agency and want to create a client portal where your clients can:

View their active projects and status
Access and download deliverables
Submit feedback and approve work
View their invoices and payment history

Let's Build It

Describe Your Portal

Start by going to stacker.ai and describing what you want to build in the prompt box:

"A client portal for my marketing agency. Clients should see their projects, download deliverables, give feedback, and view invoices. Each client should only see their own data."

Click "Build my app" and wait for the AI to generate your portal structure. This typically takes 30-60 seconds.

Be specific about what users should be able to do. The more context you provide, the better the AI can structure your portal.

Review the Generated Structure

After generation, you'll see your new portal with AI-created tables and fields. For our agency portal, you might see:

Clients

Name, email, company, status

Projects

Name, status, client, due date

Deliverables

Name, file, project, approved

Invoices

Amount, status, client, date

Under Setup → Data, review each table and add any missing fields. You can change fields and tables at any time.

Add Sample Data

Before sharing the portal, go to Setup → Data and add sample rows so you can see how the portal will look:

Create a test client record
Add a few projects linked to that client
Upload some sample deliverables
Create an invoice or two

This helps you preview the portal experience and catch any issues early.

Customize the Portal Layout

Click on "Portal" mode to see what your clients will experience. Then customize:

Branding

Upload your logo, set colors, choose a theme

Navigation

Arrange menu items, hide unnecessary pages

Page Layouts

Configure which fields appear on list and detail pages

Set Up Permissions

Ensure clients only see their own data using Portal Settings → Permissions and Data Permissions (per-user filters):

Open Portal Settings and go to the Permissions tab
Under Data Permissions, add a per-user filter for each table clients should access
Point filters at the relation or field that ties rows to the logged-in user (or their company or organization)
Use Preview as to confirm one client never sees another's rows

Test permissions by previewing the portal as a specific user. Use the "Preview as..." feature in the builder.

Add your first portal user

Portal users are rows in the table you chose under Portal Settings → Permissions—not a separate invite wizard. When their email is set and your data rules allow it, they can sign in to the published portal. Typical flow:

Open Setup → Data (or Admin) and select your portal users table (for example Clients or Customers).
Add a record or edit an existing one. Fill the mapped email field and any other fields your app needs (name, relations to companies or projects, and so on).
Save. Confirm Data Permissions from step 5 still scope what they can see.
Open the Users tab and copy the Login URL at the top—share that link with them so they know where to sign in.

They authenticate using your portal's configured method—usually a magic link or one-time code to their email, or open sign-up / SSO if you enabled those. See Managing Users and User login flow for details.

Congratulations!

You've just built a fully functional client portal. Your clients can now log in to view their projects, download deliverables, and track invoices - all with their own secure, branded experience.

Keep Building

Now that you have the basics, explore these features to enhance your portal: