Invite a customer to the portal

Quick summary: Invite the customer’s contact to create a portal account, then share the files or business records they need. Use the same contact when requesting a document or granting Documents access.

Before you start

Apps

Your Odoo address

Enter the base address of your Odoo instance. It will be stored only in this browser.

Odoo base address

The documentation does not receive your address, username, or password.

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• Contacts

You need contact-management permission to grant portal access. The customer must have a contact with a valid email address that is not already used by another Odoo account. Outgoing email must work for the invitation to reach them.

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Send the invitation

Granting access creates or reactivates the contact’s portal account and immediately sends an invitation. Use the intended person’s contact, particularly when a company has several contacts. A portal account gives access to the customer portal; access to individual records depends on the relevant app’s permissions.

Open contacts in Odoo

Your Odoo address

Enter the base address of your Odoo instance. It will be stored only in this browser.

Odoo base address

The documentation does not receive your address, username, or password.

Forget addressCancelSave

1. Open Contacts and find the customer’s existing contact. Check their Email and language; correct them before inviting.
2. Open the contact’s actions menu and choose Grant portal access.
3. In Portal Access Management, check the contact and email address on the intended row. Opening this window from a company can list several related contacts.
4. Optionally enter an Invitation Message, then click Grant Access on the intended contact’s row. Do not grant access to the other listed contacts unless they also need it.
5. Close the window. Ask the customer to open the invitation, set their password, and sign in using the invited email address.

If the row already offers Re-Invite, the contact already has portal access. Use that button to resend the invitation. An Internal User row identifies an employee account; use the customer’s own contact instead.

Share Documents or request a file

Once the account is ready, share the file or folder with that same contact. A portal invitation alone does not give access to a Documents folder. For account-only sharing, Access through link can remain None.

For a document request, select the invited contact in Request To. They sign in to fulfil the request. A contact without any Odoo user can fulfil a request using the public upload link, so a portal invitation is optional for that one-file workflow.

Send the customer Access your portal and documents if they need help signing in. They can open My Account > Documents to find files and folders shared with their account.

End portal access

Open Grant portal access again and click Revoke Access on the intended row. This disables that portal account. Also review Documents sharing: a public sharing link can still work without a signed-in account.