Guide / 5 steps / about 25 minutes

Set up your first client portal.

From sign-up to a client invited, one screen at a time. Most people finish in under half an hour.

Before you start

A client to try it on (a real one, or yourself as a test)
Your logo as an image file, if you have one
The client contact’s name and email

After you start your free trial

Answer a few questions

When you first sign in, a short setup chat asks who your first client is, what you are doing for them and who your contact there is. The answers shape the starting point, such as which portal tabs are suggested, so answer in your own words.

For the first client you can type a name or a website. If you give a site, BravaSpace reads it to pick up their brand, and a bare address like example.com works.
Adding your own company website at sign-up is optional. With one, BravaSpace fetches your brand to start from. Without one, the workspace starts neutral.
Every question has Skip for now. When the questions are done, the workspace opens by itself on an Overview that says Welcome.

Good to knowUntil you hide it, the Your first week checklist on your Overview has Take the tour again and Run the setup guide again in its menu. Nothing the guide already made is made twice.

Sidebar, Clients, Add client

Add your client with Brava

Add client opens a chat. Brava asks: “Let’s add your client. You can share their website or tell me a bit about them.” Give it their website, or describe them in a sentence. It reads their logo, colors and details from the site.

Brava asks which services their portal is for, with the best fit marked Suggested. That picks the portal tabs.
Then it shows a card with the client, their logo and colors and the portal tabs. Nothing is created until you press Approve. After that, Invite their contact and Open their portal are one click away.
Prefer fields? Add manually, under Brava’s first question, opens the four-step form (Client, Contact & portal, Projects & notes, Review). Import a list and Switch from another tool bring in many clients at once.

Client record, Portal tabs

Choose what the client sees

Every portal is made of tabs: Overview, Work, Requests, Visibility, Insights, Reports, Galleries, Team, Billing and Account. The services you named in the chat choose a preset. Switch single tabs on or off on the client record afterwards.

Presets: Marketing and SEO, Photography and video, Web design, Everything, and Just the basics.
Account is always on. Requests, Insights, Galleries, Team and Billing are off unless the preset or you switch them on for that client.
Visibility only shows once data from a connected tool has synced for the client.

Good to knowStart with fewer tabs than you think. You can always add more when the client asks.

Client record, View portal, Preview as Client

Preview it as the client

View portal opens the client’s portal with your own controls and a side bar of their tabs. Before anyone else sees it, choose Preview as Client at the bottom of that side bar. It shows exactly what the client will see, with your name and colors. Click through each tab and read it as if you had never seen it.

With nobody invited yet, the preview uses an example contact. Stop, in the bar at the top, ends it.
While you preview, changes are saved and messages you send appear as that person.
Add a first task or two so the Work tab is not empty. Tasks assigned to Internal never show to the client. Set a task to Client Review when you want a decision.

Client record, Portal Access, Invite person

Invite your client

Name and email are optional. If you add an email, only that address can use the link. The invite is a one-time link that is valid for 14 days.

The app does not send the email. Copy the link and send it yourself, ideally in your own welcome message.
The client sets their own password when they open it.
Pending invites can be copied again or revoked from Portal Access.

Good to knowNeed words for the welcome? Our onboarding article has a simple four-part structure.

If something looks different

Common snags.

That is expected. BravaSpace does not email invites. Open the client, go to Portal Access, copy the invite link again and send it yourself. If it is older than 14 days, revoke it and make a new one.

Yes. Open the client, choose View portal, then Preview as Client in the side bar. With nobody invited yet, it shows the portal as an example contact. A portal that is not switched to active stays hidden from the client, so you can get everything ready first.

Nothing is created until you press Approve. Press Cancel and tell Brava what to change, or choose Add manually to fill in the form yourself. Everything can be changed on the client record afterwards.

Your plan has a limit on client spaces. Plan & Usage shows how many you have used and the plans to upgrade to.