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What are AODocs Portals?

AODocs Portals let you create secure, branded spaces where external users can view, download, and upload documents—without accessing your internal systems. Every action is tracked with a complete audit trail.

Prerequisites

Before configuring portals, you should understand these core AODocs concepts:

• What are permissions in AODocs?
• What are document classes?
• What are external users?
• What are workflows?

Use cases

Portals solve document exchange challenges across industries. Here are common scenarios:

Financial Services & Insurance

• Loan application processing — Applicants submit tax returns, pay stubs, and bank statements through mobile-friendly portals with AI-powered document extraction
• Insurance claims — Policyholders file claims, upload photos from mobile devices, and track status in real-time
• External audit document rooms — Provide auditors temporary, read-only access with comprehensive access logs and watermarking

Legal & Professional Services

• Client portals for law firms — Share case files and discovery documents while maintaining compliance through version control
• Real estate transactions — Buyers, sellers, agents, and lenders collaborate with role-based access and e-signatures

Regulated Industries

• Clinical trial documentation — Share protocols with research sites through compliant portals enforcing FDA/HIPAA requirements
• Vendor onboarding for manufacturing — Suppliers submit certifications and specifications with AI-assisted metadata extraction
• Government contractor bids — Sealed bid submissions with time-stamping under government security standards

HR & Education

• Employee onboarding — New hires complete paperwork and access policies through self-service portals
• Student admissions — Collect transcripts and applications with automated reminders for missing documents
• Grant applications — Centralize submissions with deadline enforcement and collaborative review workflows

Key concepts

How portals work

A portal is a simplified view of an AODocs document, designed for external users. What they see depends on permissions:

Creating portals 

Once your administrator has configured the portal document class, creating a portal for an external user takes just a few steps:

1. Create a new portal — Create a document from your portal class (or let automation create it for you)
2. Add documents to share — Attach files or link related documents you want the recipient to view or download
3. Request documents — Optionally add related documents where the recipient can upload files you need from them
4. Enter the recipient's email — Add the external user's email address and set their permissions
5. Share the portal link — Send the link and you're done!

Tip: For high-volume scenarios, portals can be created automatically when triggered by workflows, document templates, or custom scripts—no manual steps required.

Portal URL structure

Every portal has a unique URL:

https://{your-aodocs-url}/portal/domain/{your-domain}/portals/{document-id}

Example: https://aodocs-staging.altirnao.com/portal/domain/acme.aodocs.com/portals/V8qJBBN8iZTbIr4zmF

Glossary

Next steps

Now that you understand what portals are and how they work, you're ready to create your first portal.

Quick start: Create your first portal — Follow our step-by-step guide to set up a basic portal and share documents with an external user.