Your clients get their own view, and it costs nothing
The status update you keep writing by hand is a page your client can already open. They raise a request against a project, it gets a reference before anyone looks at it, and they can follow it from unsorted to closed without asking anybody how it is going.
Three habits a portal quietly retires
Somebody on your side writes the same update three times a week, from memory.
A screenshot in a thread is not a record, and the thread scrolls away.
Charging per client user makes people share a login, which ruins the trail.
A reference before anyone has looked at it
A client opens the project, fills in a title and a formatted description, attaches up to three files, and picks a suggested type and priority. It lands in the project's request tracker as unsorted, which means exactly one thing: nobody has triaged it yet.
There is a Copy Request Format button for anyone who wants a structure to follow. It puts a short template on the clipboard covering what happened, where, how to reproduce it and any error code.
- Rich-text description, so steps read as steps
- Up to 3 attachments, 25MB each, PNG, JPG or PDF
- Suggested type and priority, labelled suggested, confirmed at triage
Their request tracker
Four trackers, and they all read the same way
A project opens on its overview, with request, issue, feature and change and maintenance trackers beside it, then Files and Activity, and Time where the project shares it. Tabs that do not fit the screen sit under a More menu rather than scrolling off the edge. Each tracker has stat tiles that count and filter, a search box that waits until you stop typing, and chips for whatever is active.
Opening a record shows the reference, the priority, status and type badges, who raised it and when, the description, the attachments, and who it was sorted by. If somebody gave a reason for the sort or the close, it is written on the record rather than said on a call.
- The same layout for a request, an issue and a feature or change record
- Closing and sort reasons visible, not summarised for them later
- Comments on the record, with attachments, and an edited marker on changes
- Attachments open in a preview first, pictures, PDFs, video and text alike, with a Download button
Export button does nothing on Safari
Internal work is absent, not just hidden
Every record carries a privacy level. Internal means invisible to anyone on a client role, and that holds in the records they can load, in the counts and tiles they see, and in the notification fan out, so nobody is pinged about something they cannot open. It is enforced on the server, so there is no address to guess.
Privacy carries through triage. An internal request becomes an internal issue, which is one less thing to remember at the moment you are least likely to be thinking about it.
- Tasks and personal task lists are never client-facing
- A project a client is not a member of is filtered out on the server
- Older records with nothing set read as internal, which is the safe direction
Free, unlimited, and no password to lose
Client users cost nothing and there is no cap, because charging for the people raising requests pushes you to keep clients out of the system. Add the person who noticed the problem and the manager who wants to watch progress.
Nobody sets a password. An admin creates the account, the welcome email carries the link, and signing in is a single-use six-digit code that lasts five minutes. Teams on a Microsoft tenant are handed to Microsoft sign-in instead.
- No self-serve signup, so nobody arrives unaccounted for
- Installable to a phone home screen, which is what makes push possible on iOS
- Membership is set per project, not inherited from the organisation
A calendar, the meetings they sat in, and the files you chose to share
The portal is more than a list of records. Clients get a calendar of their own carrying Malaysian and Singaporean public holidays, every meeting they have been named on and every meeting the team has shared with them, with the join link on the entry while it is live. They get a direct chat too, with the staff working on their projects and with fellow contacts in the same organisation, carrying files, voice notes and everything else a chat does.
A project's Files tab is where the documents live, with links and formatted notes beside them, and each one either stays with the team or is shared with the client: a shared link opens in a new tab and a shared note opens to read. Sharing is a deliberate step rather than a side effect of uploading: it needs the right permission and it is written into the project's activity, so nobody has to remember who was given what.
- A meeting linked to one of their projects shows that project on its page
- A finished meeting's page is locked until somebody decides what to share from it
- Asking from that locked page comes back by notification and by email
- A client's reach in chat stops at the organisations they belong to
Their portal, this week
Quiet evenings, their own clock, and a look of their choosing
Push is off until a client turns it on, and once it is on they decide when it may buzz. Office hours only holds pushes outside 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM Singapore time and delivers them at ten; meeting invites, starting-soon reminders and reminders they set still arrive at once. It is off unless they switch it on.
The rest is comfort. Times read in 24-hour or AM/PM, dark mode and font size are a switch away, and Look offers Classic or Glass, which frosts the floating panels over a purple ground and steps back for anybody whose device asks for reduced transparency. The same switches are in the team workspace.
- Email updates arrive only while push is not active on any of their devices, and can be turned off for good
- Hide online and last seen, and they stop seeing other people's too
- Sign out on the same page ends the session in every part of the product, not only that tab
Settings
The things teams ask about this
Do clients have to be given an account before they can report anything?
Yes, and that is deliberate. There is no self-serve signup: an admin creates the account with a name, an email, the Client role and the organisations it belongs to, then adds the person to each project they should see. Project membership is the step that actually grants visibility, and it is the usual reason a new client signs in to an empty portal.
Can a client change or withdraw something they filed?
They can edit the title and description of their own request, and every previous version is kept rather than overwritten. While a request is still untriaged, Actions offers Delete Request with a confirmation. Once it has been sorted, that is replaced by Add Resources for attaching more files, because the work is now a record other people are relying on.
Is the portal a separate application my client has to install?
It runs in a browser at the same sign-in gateway as the rest of Certainty HelpDesk, so there is nothing to install to use it. It is an installable web app if they want an icon on their phone, and on an iPhone or iPad installing it to the Home Screen is the only way push notifications can work at all.
What does a client see about our team's time and money?
Only what a project deliberately shares. Time sharing is off by default; turned on, the overview shows a project total in man-days and a split by record, never by person, and internal records get no line of their own. On a maintenance agreement they see the window, the monthly allowance and this month's usage against it. The cost on a maintenance record is never shown to them.
Where this connects to the rest of it
See it against your own work
Thirty minutes on a call, one of your real client projects on the screen, and an honest answer about whether this part of the product earns its place in how you work.
partnerships@dhcertainty.com