Client Free client portal for project tracking
A project client portal should be the place where your client follows progress, approves minutes and interventions, and carries out their own actions, without paying for a seat. In practice, what is called a client portal most often carries invoices, quotes or tickets. The project itself stays in a PDF sent on Friday. Here is why, and what changes with an access that really carries the project.
Three things that are called a client portal.
They exist, they work, and none was designed first to steer a project.
The CRM or ERP extension
The client consults their quotes, orders and invoices there. It is useful, it is commercial and accounting downstream, and it says nothing about progress.
The support extranet
The client opens requests there and follows how they are handled. The grain is the ticket, the unit of time the day. A project is not a queue of tickets.
The custom development
A client space built for you, carrying exactly what you want. It is counted in tens of thousands of euros and months of lead time, and it then has to be maintained.
None of the three carries the project.
Not the progress of work packages, not the dated milestones, not the risks the client should know about, not the committee minutes, not the actions the client itself owns. Yet these are the only things discussed in a committee.
So the default solution sets in, and it is the same everywhere: the PDF sent on Friday. It has four flaws, and all are structural. It is one-sided, since you write it alone. It is not dated in the useful sense, since nothing attests to what the client did with it. It commits no one, since silence is not agreement. And no one knows whether it was read.
Most existing portals come from sales or support: the project is not their first subject.
Your client is in the tool, not in front of it.
As long as you produce a document about the client, your tracking stays one-sided, whatever its quality. It becomes a steering instrument the day it becomes the place where you both work, on the same data, at the same time.
The asymmetry does not change: the supplier produces, commits and steers; the client follows, approves, and refuses where appropriate, with reasons. Visibility is shared, responsibility remains whole. This is what we call operational commitment management.
What they see, what they will never see.
The question always comes second, and it is the right one. Here is the line, as it is drawn in the product.
What is shared
Projects, work packages and tasks with their dated milestones, the risks made visible to the client, the monthly weather, the orders and financial items that concern them, meetings and committees, actions.
What never is
The supplier's internal data: human resources, team management, workload and production, margins, private milestones, internal reporting. They remain invisible to the client.
In pylotik.
What the client does, and not only what they consult.
They approve the minutes
Each set of committee minutes is submitted to them. They approve, or they reject with a reason. Once approved, the document is frozen.
They carry their own actions
An action that falls to them appears on their side, with its due date. Their delay becomes as traceable as yours.
They approve interventions
An intervention carried out at their site or remotely is submitted to them: they sign its acceptance on the technician's phone, from their client access, or by a physical signature, or they refuse it with a reason. No more paper slips to chase. See intervention management.
They confirm the weather and the amendments
Satisfaction is measured during the project, not at the end: the month's weather, with its highlights, is confirmed in committee. An amendment is also submitted to them, which they confirm or refuse.
They request corrections
A set of minutes they find inaccurate, they do not rewrite: they request a correction, and their request stays on record next to the document.
They do not touch your production
The supplier remains the only one to steer. The client changes neither progress, nor milestones, nor history, and creates no action on your side: they follow, approve, refuse and carry out the actions that fall to them.
The same mechanism works in the other direction of the contractual link: what you open to your client, your subcontractor opens to you. And an internal client is a client: an IT department facing its business units holds the same commitments, with no formal contract. See the commitment levels and the product tour.
What we are asked about client access.
Can my client change the data?
They do not change your production data: not progress, not milestones, not history. They act where the flow provides for it: they approve or refuse minutes and request corrections, they sign or refuse an intervention, they confirm or refuse an amendment, they carry out the actions assigned to them.
Does my client see my margins?
Never. Margins, costs, workload, management, human resources, private milestones and internal reporting stay invisible. The boundary is not a setting to maintain: it is carried by the data itself.
Do I need to buy access for my clients?
No, client access is free on every tier, mobile included. Charging for it would prevent what the product promises: that both parties read the same thing. Only your own users have a seat. See the pricing.
How long does it take to open a client access?
The time to add the client organization and invite people to it. There is no development, no rights setup, no connector: access is deduced from the projects that link the two organizations.
What if my client never logs in?
The minutes are submitted to them on a date, and that submission is recorded. With no answer within the period agreed between the parties, the minutes move to the approved state in pylotik, with the note that no response came: it is a state of the product, not a legal acceptance, but the dated record of what was presented to them exists, which an e-mail in an inbox cannot establish.
Can it be used with an internal client?
Yes. An IT department facing its business units is an internal client-supplier relationship: same commitments, same due dates, same need for proof, with no formal contract. The engine makes no difference.
Going further.
- The comparison of project software with a client portal: what the client sees, and what their access costs.
- Operational commitment management: the definition of the category, and the asymmetry that founds it.
- The steering committee: where the client's approval takes on its meaning.
- The product tour: what each role sees, on the supplier side and the client side.
- Intervention management: the client's approval, paperless.
- The pricing: two seats per tier, free client access.