Portal Studio

Portal Studio lets you build and brand customer portals per playbook, so the experience your customers see matches what they actually need — rather than one fixed layout for every account.

You control three things: Brand, Layout, and Content.

Where portals live

Go to Settings → Portals. The list shows every portal in your environment with its status, the playbooks using it, and when it was last edited. From a portal's row you can Preview, Edit, Set as Default, or Delete.

Above the list sits Account Home — the landing page every customer sees when they sign in. It's a single, environment-wide page, edited separately and not assigned to anything.

The Access tab covers how customers reach the portal: your portal domain, passwordless magic-link sign-in, and optional self-service sign-up.

Your plan sets how many portals you can have. At the limit, New portal is disabled and tells you so. The account home doesn't count against it.

Creating a portal

Three ways to start.

Build with Aero

Describe your onboarding in plain language — who it's for, what it needs to accomplish. Aero builds the pages, content, and brand, and where a shipped template is the better starting point it selects that and builds from there. Suggested prompts are drawn from your real playbooks.

Start from a template

Five ship, each previewable under your own brand before you commit. The four built templates arrive as multi-page portals, not single pages — Supplier onboarding opens with Home, Documents, Compliance and Resources pages already built.

Blank canvas

One empty page, everything up to you.

Everything Aero produces is fully editable. Treat it as a starting point.

Brand

Brand controls what the portal looks like. New portals inherit your organization's brand defaults (Settings → Brand), then override per portal.

Changing your organization defaults sets the starting point for portals you create from then on. It does not restyle portals that already exist.

Brand from your website

Paste your site URL and Aero fills in your palette, type, logo, and favicon. Anything it pulls is tagged From your website so you can see where it came from, and you can override any of it.

Colors — seven slots

Under the swatches, a readability check reports whether your combination holds up as text on background. Fix a warning before you publish.

Eight palette presets are available: Core Purple, Ocean, Forest, Indigo, Teal, Crimson, Sunset, and Slate.

Appearance — dark mode

Offer dark mode is on by default. Customers switch appearance from their account menu on portal pages, and What customers see first sets the default they land on — Light, Dark, or System. System is the default, so the portal follows whatever the customer's device is set to.

Dark colors are generated from your light palette, so there is nothing to set up. If a generated one is wrong, switch the color editor to Dark and override just that slot — each shows as Generated or Overridden, and an override resets on its own. Upload a Dark mode logo if your primary mark disappears on a dark ground.

Type

Three pairings — Modern, Friendly, Editorial. Or upload your own heading and body fonts, which is useful when you're embedding the portal in your own application and want typography to match. An uploaded font overrides the preset.

Style

Six presets — Classic, Bold, Friendly, Corporate, Editorial, Minimal — or set the levers yourself.

Logos and images

Each brand section resets independently, and Reset to default at the top of the panel clears palette, type, style, logo and favicon together. Nothing changes for customers until you publish.

Layout

• Navigation position — Top (tabs) or Left (sidebar). A single-page portal shows no navigation at all.

• Content width — Centered, capped at a comfortable reading width, or Full.

• Footer — off by default. Shows your logo and a copyright line. The "Powered by OnRamp" line always appears.

• AI assistant — on by default. Lets customers open Aero from a chat button in the corner. The playbook's portal AI chat setting has to be on too. Not available on the account home.

Sidebar

Off by default. Turning it on gives long-lived content — notes, your team, links — its own column, so it never stretches the page. Three settings follow:

• Sidebar position — Left or Right. Right by default, and forced to the right while navigation is on the left.

• Shared sidebar — on means one sidebar shown on every page. Turn it off to build a different one per page.

• Hero spans full width — on keeps the welcome hero above the sidebar, edge to edge. Turn it off to place the hero inside the main column.

Not every widget can go in the sidebar. The five that are always full width — Welcome hero, Progress tracker, Project timeline, Your projects, Start a project — stay in the main column. Everything else can be dragged across.

Pages

Portals are multi-page. Add, rename, reorder, and delete pages from the Pages tree, and drag widgets within a page, between pages, or between the page and its sidebar. Each page has one setting — Page title, which is what customers see in the navigation. It accepts merge fields.

Content

Build each page from the widget library, then configure each widget.

Width. Every widget can fill one third, one half, two thirds, or the full row, so you can place widgets side by side. Some are full-width only. On narrow screens everything stacks.

Section headings. Drop a plain heading between widgets to break a long page into sections.

Eight widgets are limited to one per page: Next step spotlight, Waiting on you, Hours invested, Project timeline, Conversations, Welcome message, Your projects, Start a project.

Six are project-only and can't go on the account home: Progress tracker, Project tasks, Project timeline, Resources, Your team, Welcome message.

Widgets

Welcome hero

Project and account pages.

A full-bleed branded hero with a personal greeting and the progress tracker. Usually the first thing a customer sees.

Options: Eyebrow · Heading · Body · Show logo · Logo (overrides the portal logo for this hero only) · Show progress stepper · Progress display (stages or a single progress bar) · Show percentage complete · Show account identity (customer logo, project and account name) · Show dates (a date the project hasn't set stays hidden). Everything from Show progress stepper onward is project pages only.

Progress tracker

Project pages only.

How far the onboarding has come, reading the project's modules — either as horizontal stages or as a single progress bar. Use the standalone version when you want progress lower down a page, or on a different page than the hero.

Options: Title · Display (stages or progress bar) · Show percentage complete.

Next step spotlight

Project and account pages. One per page.

The single recommended next action, made unmissable.

Options: Eyebrow · Caught-up message · Button label · All-done message (account) · No-projects message (account).

Project tasks

Project pages only.

The project's tasks grouped by stage, with progress per stage. Shows the customer's own company's work by default.

Options: Title · Modules to show · How many modules · Show filter · Default filter (All / Mine / Customer) · Let customers check off tasks here.

Modules to show is how you keep a long plan from landing all at once. All shows every stage. Fixed shows the first few. Rolling shows the next few that aren't finished yet, so the list moves forward with the project and completed stages drop away. Either of the last two then takes a count from one to five.

A task with nothing to fill in can be checked off straight from the list. Tasks with steps always open first, so customers see the detail before completing.

Waiting on you

Project and account pages. One per page.

Everything still open on the customer's side, in one short list, ordered by due date with overdue work highlighted. On the account home it spans every project and each row names its project.

Options: Title · All-clear message · Most it will list (3 / 5 / 8 / all) · Let customers check off tasks here (project pages only).

Favorites

Project and account pages.

A shortlist each customer builds by starring stages and tasks. You choose what they may save; they choose what goes in it. Saved items persist across sessions, up to 20 per project. Subtasks can't be starred. The account home shows the whole cross-project shortlist, but nothing new is saved from there.

Options: Title (defaults to "Saved for later") · Customers can save (stages and tasks / tasks / stages) · Show at most (3 / 5 / 10 / all) · Keep completed items · Hide until something is saved.

Hours invested

Project and account pages. One per page. Available once time tracking is switched on for your organization.

The hours your team has put in and the hours allotted. On a project page, that project's two figures; on the account home, a row per project with the totals underneath. Submitted time only, so the figures don't move between visits.

Options: Title · Show time spent · Show time allotted · Time counted (all submitted time, or only time submitted against tasks) · Note.

Project timeline

Project pages only. One per page.

A Gantt of the project's stages on a real time axis, with today marked. Stage dates come from the tasks inside them.

Options: Title · Show tasks · Opens showing (Current / All / None) · Flag late work — your team's late work is never flagged to customers.

Conversations

Project and account pages. One per page.

Comment activity rolled up from across tasks, one row per task, so customers don't hunt through individual tasks. Read-only — rows open the task, where comments are actually left. On the account home each row names its project.

Options: Title · Show filter · Default filter (All / Unanswered).

Your team

Project pages only.

The people guiding the onboarding, on both sides.

Options: Title · Members shown (All / Internal / External) · Show email · Allow invite (lets customers invite a teammate from the card).

Members shown narrows the card to one side of the project — your own people, or the customer's — where showing both would be noise.

Activity feed

Project and account pages.

Portal-facing activity on the project. On the account home it covers every project the customer can see.

Options: Title · Entries shown (5 / 8 / 12 / 20) · Include the customer's own actions — off gives a proof-of-progress panel.

FAQ

Project and account pages.

Question and answer pairs you author here. Good for the questions your team answers repeatedly.

Options: Title · Intro · Questions.

Resources

Project pages only.

The files and links shared with this project, kept up to date automatically.

Options: Title.

Links and resources

Project and account pages.

A list of links you write yourself — guides, videos, downloads. Unlike Resources, nothing is pulled from the project.

Options: Title · Intro · Icons · Links, each with a title, URL, and an icon from twelve choices.

Welcome message

Project pages only. One per page.

Your playbook's welcome note, shown exactly as authored.

Options: Eyebrow · Show sender (credits the project owner below the message).

Custom content

Project and account pages.

Write your own — text, images, and video in one block, for when no structured widget fits. The editor gives you headings, bulleted and numbered lists, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code, and links, plus merge fields anywhere in the text.

Options: Heading above this widget · Content · Appearance (Card or Plain). Plain drops the background and border, so a lone heading reads as a heading over the page.

Your projects

Account and project pages. One per page.

A grid of every project on the account, each linking to its own portal. Customers with one project see just that one. Always present on the account home and can't be removed there.

Options: Title · Default view (Cards or Table).

Start a project

Account and project pages. One per page.

Your self-serve playbooks, so customers can start new projects themselves without leaving the portal. Each opens a confirmation before the project is created. Hides itself entirely when there's nothing to start.

Options: Title · Intro · Empty message. Leave title and intro blank to use the self-service copy from your portal settings.

Together, Your projects and Start a project give customers one view of everything happening across their account. A dedicated Project Activity page pairing Conversations with the Activity feed gives them a single view of engagement.

Personalization in the portal

Fields resolve per viewer, at view time. Write them as {{namespace.field}}, or insert them from the field picker in any text, long text, or rich text field — including page titles.

Your custom data fields are available too, inside the namespace that owns them.

A field that can't be resolved renders as nothing — customers never see a raw tag. A missing first name falls back to "there."

Personalization isn't limited to the hero. Use it throughout to keep the experience specific to whoever is logged in.

Previewing with real data

Preview shows the portal as a customer sees it, at Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile.

Data from controls whose data fills the canvas. It starts on Sample customer with invented data; switch to any of your real customers to see their projects, progress, and self-serve playbooks.

Preview against more than one customer. A customer with one project and a customer with four see materially different portals, and previewing both is the fastest way to catch layout problems.

While you're previewing a real customer, any widget whose content that project has overridden says so, with a link through to the project. That's why the canvas can differ from what you just typed.

Saving and publishing

Portal Studio separates your working draft from what customers see.

Save draft keeps your work without changing the live portal. The status pill tells you where you stand — Not saved, Unsaved changes, Draft, or Live. Discard throws away an unpublished draft and returns to the published version.

Publish opens Review & publish, which does three things:

• Aero's review — checks your portal like a customer would and lists what to fix, with an Apply button where the fix is mechanical.

• Publish to — assign playbooks to this portal right here. Each row shows whether it's assigned here, on another portal, or unassigned, and Aero suggests assignments with a reason.

• What will publish — the reach, before you commit: how many live projects will update immediately, how many are kept on the version they launched with, and how many have their own edits. Those edits stay; everything else follows this template.

Versions

Each publish makes a new version of the portal, numbered. A project shows which version it's on and whether that's the latest. You can move an individual project forward to the current version at any time — but you can't roll a portal back to an earlier one, so publish deliberately.

Assigning portals to playbooks

Portals attach to playbooks. There are three places to set that:

• Playbook settings → Customer portal. Pick the portal projects from this playbook should open in. Leave it on Default portal to follow whichever portal is set as default.

• Review & publish → Publish to, as you publish.

• A single project's portal settings, when one project needs a different portal from the rest of its playbook.

One portal is the default — set it from the portals list. It must be published first, and there's always at least one. Any playbook without an explicit assignment uses it, and if you delete a portal its playbooks fall back to the default.

New projects open in the assigned portal. Projects already running keep the version they launched with — so republishing never changes a portal out from under a customer mid-onboarding.

Changing one project at a time

Most of the time a portal is a template every project follows. When a single customer needs something different, open that project and go to Portal settings. Four things live there.

• Customer portal — which portal this one project opens in, regardless of its playbook.

• Version — the version this project is on, and whether it's the latest. Update to v# moves it forward to the current published version. (NOTE: This only shows if you chose not to update existing projects when publishing the new version

• Portal content — rewrite what a widget says, for this project only. The hero's heading, body and logo, the FAQ, Custom content, and Links and resources can each be overridden.

• Portal branding — override colors, type, and assets for this project. Anything left unset follows the portal.

Overrides survive republishing. That's the "how many have their own edits" count in Review & publish: those projects keep what you wrote for them, and take the rest of the template.

Account home

Account home is the landing page every customer sees when they sign in, listing every project on their account. Edit it from the portals list. It's environment-wide — there's one, it isn't assigned to anything, and it uses the account-scope widgets only. Your projects is always on it and can't be removed, and the AI assistant doesn't appear there.

Aero in Portal Studio

Aero sits in a rail beside the canvas and can do nearly everything you can: build a whole portal from a description, pick a template, add and remove widgets, change their settings and widths, add and reorder pages, write custom content, set your brand from your website, and adjust layout.

Select a widget or a field first and Aero edits that specific thing — "make this shorter" works.

Two things Aero deliberately doesn't do: its edits stay in your browser until you Save draft, and it never publishes. Asking it to publish opens Review & publish, and the final click is yours.

Aero also appears inside the portal for customers when you enable it in Layout — and the playbook's portal AI chat setting has to be on too.

Common questions

I published something wrong. Can I go back to the previous version?

Not to an earlier published version — publishing moves forward only. What protects you is that projects already running stay on the version they launched with until someone moves them, so a bad publish doesn't reach work in flight. Fix the portal and publish again; new projects pick up the correction immediately, and you can move any individual project forward from its own Portal settings when you're happy with it.

If you haven't published yet, Discard throws the draft away and returns you to the live version.

Why doesn't my change show up for a customer?

Three things to check, in order. Your work may still be a draft — the status pill says Draft or Unsaved changes until you publish. That project may be on an earlier version, which its Portal settings will tell you, and Update to v# moves it forward. Or that project has its own override for the widget you edited, which keeps what was written for it; Preview says so on the widget, with a link to the project.

Can I copy a portal and tweak it?

There's no duplicate action. Build the new one from the same template, or describe what you want to Aero and edit from there — both get you to a working portal faster than copying would, and everything either produces is fully editable.

Why can't I add another portal?

You're at the number your plan allows, and the New portal button says so on hover. Deleting a portal you no longer use frees a slot — its playbooks fall back to the default portal. The account home doesn't count against the limit.

Why can't I delete this portal?

It's the default. There's always at least one, so set a different portal as default first, then delete this one.

A widget I want isn't in the library. Where is it?

Two reasons a widget won't appear. Six are project-only and never show on the account home: Progress tracker, Project tasks, Project timeline, Resources, Your team, Welcome message. And Hours invested appears only once time tracking is switched on for your organization.

If it's in the library but greyed out, you've already used it on this page — eight widgets are limited to one per page.

Can customers change the portal?

No. Customers read the portal and act inside it — completing tasks, starring items into Favorites, and inviting a teammate where you've allowed it. Layout, brand, and content are yours.

Who can created & edit in the portal studio?

Super Admins are the only role that has access to create and edit portals at the organization level.