With Shared cases you give external people – your clients or customers – access to selected content through the customer portal: either a whole case, a single folder, or even just a single document, for viewing only or for uploading too.
Step 1: Start sharing from the case
Open the case and click the share icon at the top right. The menu offers two options: Copy link (for internal users) and Share whole case. To share just a single folder, use the Share folder action on the folder in the files area.
Sharing individual documents
You no longer have to share a whole case or an entire folder: open the Attachments tab, tick the box in front of the document you want, and click the share icon in the bar at the bottom. The share wizard shows the selected document as a chip at the top of the window – exactly that file is what gets shared.
Tick “Share whole case (instead of just the folder)” to widen the share to the complete case. Without it, the share stays limited to the selected file or folder.
Step 2: Invite external people
The share wizard opens with three steps – People, Tasks and Message.
- Add emails to invite: enter the email addresses of the external people. They receive an invitation email and thereby access to the customer portal – a portal account is created automatically if needed.
- Address book: instead of typing, pick recipients from the address book next to the input field. It has two tabs: Contacts (every contact with an email address) and Cases (email addresses taken from the case's fields).
- Recently used: the clock icon beside it lists addresses you shared with recently – one click selects them again.
- Allow file upload: when ticked, invited people can also upload files. Without it, they can only view and download the content.
- Expiry date: at the bottom left you set how long the share is valid. The default is No expiry; with a date, access ends automatically.
- Tasks & message (optional): in the following steps you can assign tasks and add a personal message that appears in the invitation email.
Click Next to complete the steps and send the invitation.
A note on tasks: tasks can only be assigned to people who already have an account. For brand-new recipients, share without tasks first – once they have created an account from the invitation, you can assign tasks to them.
Step 3: What the external person sees
The recipient signs in to the customer portal and finds the share under “Shared cases” – the whole case if you shared one, otherwise just the shared folder or document. They can view and download the files and – if allowed – upload their own. A download is only offered where it is genuinely permitted.
Overview & revoke: “Shared”
You find all of a project’s shares under Project settings (gear) → Security → Shared. The page shows key figures (cases, recipients, whole cases, folder shares) and can be filtered by case or by person – so you always know who has access to what and can revoke a share at any time.
For every recipient the page also states the terms of the share: whether the person is already registered, whether they may upload files or can only view and download the content, and – if one was set – when the share expired.
Subscribing to changes
When you share something, you do not have to keep checking whether anything happened there. Switch on Subscribe to changes in the share wizard – you then receive an email as soon as the people you invited change something in the shared area.
The subscription can be turned on and off per recipient: in the recipient list an icon shows whether the change subscription is active for that person; one click toggles it.