Email-authenticated Client Portals

Email-authenticated Client Portals are the new way for your Clients to access their Client Portal, replacing to the now-deprecated One Click Links. They offer the same level of convenience while greatly improving security and functionality.

• Same Convenience: your clients will still not need to remember a password. Occasionally, when they go to their portal, they will need to click a one-time link that’s emailed to them to prove they should have access.
• More Security: With the new email authentication added to the Client Portals, we’ve eliminated the risk of bad actors gaining access to your one click link.
• New Functionality: more security means more functionality. Here are some of the new features:
  • You can now have a Login to Client Portal button on your website. Read more below.
  • Merged Client Portals - clients with multiple company files can access all their questions from the same link.
  • Better support for emailing assignees.
  • Email and text merge tag for Contact First Name.
  • Publish Management Reports directly to the Client Portal.

Upgrading to Email-authenticated Client Portals

To upgrade to using email authenticated Client Portals, click the Upgrade Client Portal button. You will need to create one or more Contacts with emails so they can access the portal.

Once you upgrade, the old one click links will still work, they’ll just redirect to the new link and ask your client to authenticate via the email you specify for them.

You can also use the new Client Portal Update Email Template to tell your clients about these changes.

If you have any questions or would like assistance upgrading your Client Portals, please contact us or find time on our calendar.



How this works for your clients

Your clients will still experience the simple login process they've come to expect:

• Step 1: they get an email or text about new questions in their portal.



• Step 2: if they are already authenticated, they'll go straight to their client portal, just like they did with one click links.



• Step 3: if this is the first time they are accessing the link on a new device, they'll be prompted to request a one-time link. If you have whitelabel enabled, this will also come from your email.





• Step 4: They click that button, and they'll be logged in. After they have logged in, they'll stay logged in so they won't need to click the one-time link again until their cookie expires.

Putting your Client Portal login on your website

Now that Client Portals are email-authenticated, you can now put a button on your website to allow your clients to go to their client portal from your site.

To do this, get your base Client Portal link (e.g., clients.example.com), and then add a button to your website where clicking it goes to that link. From there, if your clients click this link, they'll be able to go straight to their portal from your website.

FAQs

My client wants to login with a password. How can they set one?

Your clients can set a password to login to their Client Portal in one of two ways.

First, you can send them a password reset link that they can use to set a password.



Second, they can request one themselves from the Client Portal. To do that, they should go to your Client Portal and click sign in manually instead. Then, they click Get help signing in, type in their email, and click Reset Password. Once they have done that, they'll receive an email with a link to set a password that they can use to log into the client portal.