Last Modified On: July 28, 2026
Welcome to the Inspire Planner External Portal, a secure collaboration space that extends project visibility and engagement beyond your internal Salesforce users. The External Portal allows external stakeholders, customers, partners, and project participants to access relevant project information, collaborate with project teams, and stay aligned on project progress — all from a centralized, branded experience.
With the External Portal, organizations can provide external users with access to key project features while maintaining control over permissions and visibility. External users can view project schedules, track assigned tasks, participate in discussions, review project updates, and collaborate with internal teams without requiring full Salesforce access.
The External Portal experience can be customized to meet your organization’s collaboration needs. Administrators can enable premium collaboration features, including:
This guide provides administrators with an overview of the Inspire Planner External Portal, explains the available configuration options and features, and outlines the steps required to enable, configure, and manage portal functionality for external users. It also covers setting up portal access, configuring collaboration features, and understanding how external users interact with projects, schedules, tasks, and shared information.Please note the following:
This help article has been updated to include the External Portal 2.0 premium features and enhancements available with the Inspire Planner July 2026 Major Release, which will be available beginning August 11, 2026.
To enable the Inspire Planner External Project Portal, you must be a Salesforce Administrator with an Inspire Planner License and the Inspire Planner Administrator permission set assigned. The administrator who enables this feature must retain the Inspire Planner License.
The Inspire Planner External Project Portal must be enabled before external users can access project information and collaborate with internal teams. This section outlines the steps for enabling the portal.
Once enabled, administrators can configure the portal experience and control which collaboration features are available to external users based on their organization’s needs.
A confirmation message will appear onscreen to indicate that the External Project Portal has been successfully enabled.
The External Portal now supports four premium collaboration features that can be switched on per organization: Custom Object Tabs, Chatter, Task Checklists, and File Sharing. This guide explains what each feature does, how access is controlled, and how administrators enable them.
Access to each feature is controlled by two independent switches, and a feature is active only when both are on:
Please note:
Each feature must pass two checks before it appears in the portal:
If either switch is off, the feature is hidden from all portal users in your organization and its data cannot be accessed. Enabling a setting for a feature your organization is not entitled to has no effect.
Feature opt-ins live on the Inspire Planner Config custom setting in your Salesforce org:
In Salesforce Setup, search for Custom Settings.
Next to Inspire Planner Config, click Manage.
Click Edit.
Check the box for each feature you want to activate (see the Settings Reference below).
Click Save. Note: Changes take effect the next time a portal user logs in, or automatically within 5 minutes for users already signed in. To validate a change immediately, log out of the portal and back in.
When enabled, portal users can view and post Chatter messages on their tasks, keeping the conversation in Salesforce where your internal team already works.
Note: The portal chat shows text conversations. A Chatter post that contains only a file attachment with no message does not appear in the portal and does not light the chat icon.
When enabled, portal users see a checklist column in their task grids. Tasks with checklist items show an icon with progress; clicking it opens the checklist so portal users can review and complete items.
When enabled, the project view can display additional tabs for custom objects related to the project (as configured in your Portal Object Config). When disabled, these tabs are simply absent - the project view otherwise works normally.
When enabled, portal users can view and upload file attachments on projects and tasks. When disabled, attachment lists and upload controls are hidden, and file data cannot be accessed from the portal.
Enable Custom Objects in Project Portal (Requires Premium+ Success Plan)
Off
Shows custom object tabs in the project view (if entitled).
Enable Chatter in Project Portal (Requires Premium+ Success Plan)
Activates Chatter columns and chat panels (if entitled).
Enable Checklists in Project Portal (Requires Premium+ Success Plan)
Shows task checklist columns and popups (if entitled).
Enable File Sharing in Project Portal (Requires Premium+ Success Plan)
Allows viewing and uploading attachments (if entitled).
Disable Effort in Project Portal
Hides the Planned and Actual Effort columns (independent of entitlements).
Note: The Enabled settings only take effect for features your organization is entitled to. Contact Inspire Planner if a feature you expect is unavailable after enabling it.
Customize the Projects experience by adding custom object tabs that provide users with quick access to additional project-related information. Custom object tabs allow your organization to extend the Project workspace beyond the standard tabs by displaying data from Salesforce custom objects directly within a project.
Administrators can configure which custom objects are available as tabs, helping users view and manage relevant information in one centralized location without navigating away from the Project record.