Sharing documents, photos and selections

Available onBuilder

Nothing reaches the client’s page unless you put it there. Four things feed it.

Documents

Two ways to share a file, both on the same job:

Put it in the Client Documents folder. Making a client link creates a top-level folder called Client Documents under the job’s Documents. Everything in it, and in any folder inside it, is on the client’s page. This is the habit to build: contract, drawings for construction, certificates, warranties.
Tick any other file. In the Client portal card on Project settings, press choose next to the shared-document count. Every live file on the job is listed with a tick box; files in Client Documents are ticked and locked. Tick a file anywhere else and it is shared without moving it.

A file marked obsolete in Documents disappears from the client’s page. Files the client sends you through the Messages tab are filed under the job’s Messages folder, not Client Documents, so they never show back to the client as a “shared document”.

Photos from site

Every photo on a site diary day has a Share with client tick under it. Tick it and the photo is on the client’s Photos tab, grouped by the diary day, with its caption. Untick to take it back.

Nothing is shared by default. A photo of a defect, a wrong delivery or a subcontractor’s mess stays in the diary where it belongs; the client sees the slab, the frame and the roof going on.

If ticking each photo is more than you want to do, the Client portal card has a Share all site-diary photos by default switch for the job. Turning it on shares every live photo already in the diary and every photo taken from then on, from the desktop or the phone. The tick on each photo still works the other way: untick one to hide it. Turning the switch off stops new photos being shared; the ones already shared stay until you untick them.

On the phone the same tick is on the photo in the diary screen.

The schedule

Off unless you turn it on. The Client portal card has a Share the schedule switch for the job. With it on, the client gets a Schedule tab: each stage with its tasks, planned start and finish dates, percent complete, milestones, a “today” line, and a running late flag on anything past its finish date without being done. The overall percent is weighted by task duration.

What the client never sees, switch or no switch: task cost, the supplier or subcontractor on a task, call-ups and their status, delays, notes, float and the critical path. The tab reads the same tasks as your Gantt, so it moves as your plan moves - and the page says so to the client. If you re-plan often, tell them what changed their move-in rather than letting them discover it on the tab.

Colour selections

The Selections tab uses the job’s existing share link. If you have shared the colour schedule, the client’s page shows how many selections are made and a button that opens it. If you have not, the tab says so and nothing else.

Variations and claims

These need no sharing step. A variation appears on the client’s page once it has been sent to that client (or they requested it); a progress claim appears once it exists on the job for that client. The Claims tab works out paid / part paid / awaiting payment from the payments you record against the job, so record payments as they arrive or the client will see a claim as outstanding after they have paid it.

The client chat

The Messages tab is a chat between the client and your team. It is a Messages conversation of a special kind - Client

on the job:
everyone with access to the job sees it in Messages on the desktop and the phone, like the job’s General chat, and gets a notification when the client writes;
the client’s messages carry the client’s name; yours carry yours;
the client can send a photo or a file, which is stored on the job;
it cannot be left, only muted; and the client only ever sees this one conversation, never the General chat or any group.