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This guide walks you through creating a portal and using every tab in the Design editor — Pages, Layouts, Navigation, Components, and Branding — to assemble a complete, branded experience ready for participants.
The portal opens in the Design editor — a three-step wizard at the top: Design → Preview → Publish.
When you open a brand-new portal you are offered five starter templates. Each one pre-populates pages, a navigation structure, a sidebar layout, a hero banner, and relevant components so you have something concrete to work from immediately:
| Template | Best for | Pre-built pages |
|---|---|---|
| Retailer Portal | RMA, warranty, and invoice self-service | Home · My Returns · Return Detail · Warranties · Warranty Detail · Invoices · My Account |
| Education Portal | Tests, quizzes, leaderboards, and certificates | Dashboard · Available Tests · Test Detail · My Results · Result Detail · Leaderboard · Certificates |
| Support Portal | Ticket tracking and knowledge base | Dashboard · My Tickets · Ticket Detail · Knowledge Base · Article · My Account |
| Research Portal | Survey panels and research programmes | Dashboard · My Surveys · Survey Detail · My Responses · Scores · Certificates · Profile |
| Survey Analytics Portal | Personal analytics dashboards | Dashboard (with analytics widgets) · My Responses · Scores · Profile |
| Blank Canvas | Fully custom portals built from scratch | One home page — build everything yourself |
Pick the closest template and customize it. You can also switch templates later from the toolbar without losing your branding settings.
The left side of the editor is an icon bar with five tabs. Each tab opens a panel that controls a different aspect of your portal. Click the icon to switch panels; the canvas on the right reflects your changes immediately.
The Pages tab is where you manage every screen in your portal. Each page has three settings:
invoices becomes panel.acme.com/invoices. Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. A slug that contains a colon-prefixed segment — such as tickets/:ticketId — is a dynamic page: the same template renders different records depending on what is in the URL.One page is marked as the default landing page — where participants are routed immediately after signing in. Change which page is the default from the page settings.
A page slug like tickets/:ticketId creates a dynamic page. When a Data List component navigates to it, the record’s ID is placed in the URL and the Data Detail component on that page loads the matching record automatically. This two-component, two-page pattern gives participants a full drill-down data experience for any record type — no code required.
To add a page: click Add Page, fill in the title, slug, and access level, then click Save. To delete a page, click the delete icon on its row — update any navigation items that linked to it afterwards.
A layout is the visual shell that wraps every page — where the navigation sits and how the main content area is proportioned. Choose from the available layout thumbnails:
All layouts are mobile-responsive — the navigation adapts for small screens without any extra work.
The Navigation tab controls the menu participants see in the sidebar (or wherever the active layout places navigation). Build and manage the menu structure:
Keep navigation focused — five to eight items is the sweet spot. Participants should be able to orient themselves in one glance. Dynamic detail pages (e.g. tickets/:ticketId) don’t need to appear in the nav — participants reach them by clicking rows in a list.
The Components tab is your building-block library. First select a page from the Pages tab to open it on the canvas, then switch to the Components tab to add items to that page.
Drag any component onto the canvas or click to insert it at the bottom of the page. Every component has a settings panel on the right side of the editor where you configure its content, data bindings, and style.
A single aggregated number — count, average, or sum — drawn from any data entity, with an optional filter applied. Scoped to the signed-in participant by default. Stack several in a Section Container to build a metrics bar:
A paginated, sortable, searchable table of records. In the component settings choose:
tickets/:ticketId), enabling full drill-downA full detail view for a single record, identified by a URL parameter. Place this on a dynamic page (e.g. tickets/:ticketId), set the entity type, and set the parameter name to :ticketId. When a participant clicks a row in a Data List that navigates here, this component loads and displays the matching record automatically.
The Branding tab controls every element of your portal’s visual identity — from what participants see before they even sign in, to the logo in the sidebar on every page. Changes here save automatically on blur.
Your organization’s logo, displayed in the sidebar header and prominently on the login and registration screens. To set or change the logo:
If no portal-specific logo is set, the portal falls back to your organization’s logo automatically. This means a freshly created portal already looks on-brand without any extra steps.
The bold headline participants read on the sign-in screen before they authenticate — the first branded text they see on your domain. Examples:
This field is translatable: add a value for each language your portal supports and participants see it in their own language.
A short paragraph immediately below the login title — a natural place for program context, participation instructions, or a brief value statement. Examples:
Also translatable per language.
The custom hostname this portal is served on. Only verified panel domains (from Settings → Domains → Participant Panel) appear in the dropdown. Selecting a domain here is what connects your design to the live URL participants will use.
If you haven’t added a domain yet, the dropdown shows an + Add new domain option that takes you directly to the domain setup screen. Come back and select the domain once it is verified.
A short, URL-safe identifier used in the live preview link so you can test the portal from a real browser tab. Use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. This is set automatically when you create the portal but can be edited here if you need a cleaner identifier.
Every change in every tab is saved automatically in the background. The toolbar shows a sync indicator — “Saved” when everything is stored, “Saving…” briefly during an update. No manual save button needed.
All saved states are preserved in the Version History drawer (clock icon in the toolbar). Find any previous version and click Restore to roll back — useful when an experimental change didn’t work out.
Every text field in the editor — page titles, navigation labels, headings, paragraphs, button labels, login title, and login description — shows a language switcher when your organization has multiple languages enabled. Fill in each locale. The portal renders in the participant’s preferred language and falls back to the default language for any untranslated strings.
Once your design is assembled, walk through the complete experience yourself before any participant can see it. Continue to Previewing and Testing Your Portal.