Last Modified On: August 7, 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.
This guide provides an overview of the External Portal experience, explains the available features, and guides users through accessing projects, viewing schedules, managing tasks, and collaborating with project teams.
Please Note:
Before using the Inspire Planner External Project Portal, it must be enabled for your organization. For instructions, see Admin Guide - Enable the Inspire Planner External Project Portal.
To allow an external contact to view a project and their assigned tasks, they must first be added as a Project Collaborator on that project.
To learn how, please see Share a Project (Project Collaborators)
Once a contact has been added as a Project Collaborator, they’ll receive an email notification letting them know a project has been shared with them.
The email includes the Project Name as a clickable link. When the contact clicks the link, they’ll be taken directly to the Inspire Planner External Project Portal to access the project.
When an external contact updates a task—such as changing the status, logging actual effort, or adding a description—Inspire Planner automatically posts the update to the task’s Chatter feed. The Project Manager (Project Owner) is tagged in the post to ensure they’re notified of any changes in real time (see example below).
If preferred, Project Managers also have the option to turn off these Chatter notifications. To do so, simply go to the Details tab.
Set 'Disable Project Direct Messages' to TRUE and click on Save to save your changes.
If you do not see the 'Disable Project Direct Messages' field in the project details, ask your Salesforce System Administrator to review the Admin Guide - Chatter Notifications for External Contact Task Updates
The following sections describe the External Project Portal experience from the perspective of an external collaborator (Contact).
The first time you access the Inspire Planner External Project Portal, you’ll be prompted to register.
Your email address will be used as your default username. Simply create a password and click Register to complete the process.
Once registered, you can then use the same email address and password to log in to the portal.
Helpful Tip: When you log in, make sure to select “Remember me.” This will save your login details so you don’t have to enter them each time. We also recommend bookmarking https://projects.inspireplanner.com in your browser for quick access and a smoother, automatic sign-in experience.
Become familiar with the External Project Portal interface and learn how to navigate its key features and workspaces.
Once you have logged in, the first page you will see is the Project List, which displays all projects that have been shared with you. Click the name of a project to open and view its details.
If the entire project has been shared with you, you will be able to view the full project schedule, including the Gantt chart. If only specific tasks have been shared with you, you will see only those tasks that have been assigned to you or explicitly shared with you.
Please note:
To return to the project list, click either the Home Icon or Projects Icon.
View and update your assigned tasks across all projects from a single, centralized task list.
To view and update tasks assigned to you across all projects, click the My Tasks tab. This opens the unified task list, where you can manage all of your assigned tasks from a single location.
The six (6) summary tiles at the top provide an overview of your tasks by status, allowing you to quickly see your Total Tasks and how many tasks are Not Started, In Progress, Waiting, Completed, and Overdue. Click a tile to filter the task list and display only the tasks in that category. Click Total Tasks to display all of your assigned tasks.
To focus on outstanding work, you can hide completed tasks by clicking Hide Completed in the top-right corner.
Tasks that are ready to begin are identified by a green flag displayed beside the task. A task is considered ready to start when its predecessor tasks have been completed or otherwise satisfy the task dependency requirements.
You can update the Status, % Complete, Actual Effort, and Description fields. To make changes, simply double-click the field you want to edit. Your changes are automatically saved when you click outside the field and are immediately synchronized with the corresponding project in Inspire Planner.
Note:When entering Actual Effort, specify the total time spent using decimal values in 0.25 (15-minute) increments. For example, enter 1.25 to represent 1 hour and 15 minutes.
If a task has associated checklist items, the Checklist icon will appear highlighted. Click the icon to view and complete the checklist items for that task.
Note:Checklist item support is available only with the Premium + Success plan.
To view and post updates in the Task Chat, click the Chatter icon. For more information to Task Chat, please see External Project Portal - Enable External Chatter.
Note:
To view and update the tasks assigned to you in a specific project, open the project and click the My Tasks tab.
Your assigned tasks are displayed on the page. The six (6) summary tiles at the top provide an overview of your tasks by status, allowing you to quickly see your Total Tasks and how many tasks are Not Started, In Progress, Waiting, Completed, and Overdue. Click a tile to filter the task list and display only the tasks in that category. Click Total Tasks to display all of your assigned tasks.
From here, you can update the Status and % Complete fields. Your changes are automatically saved when you click outside the field and are immediately synchronized with the corresponding project in Inspire Planner.
Note: At present, the Actual Effort and Description fields can only be updated from the Unified Task List. Support for updating these fields from the My Tasks tab within a project is planned for a future release.
You can access the unified Task List at any time by clicking on the My Tasks icon in the top-right corner.
The Project Toolbar on the left side of the screen provides icons for navigating and performing various actions within the project. Some icons may appear grayed out—these represent actions that are only available to Project Managers.
If External File Sharing is enabled for a Project, then the View All Project Attachments (Folder Icon) will be available in the project toolbar. For more information, please see External Project Portal - Share Project Files.
The Gantt Toolbar, located in the top right corner, contains icons that allow you to navigate and perform different actions within the Gantt Chart.
To log out of the Portal, you can simply close your browser or click the Log Out button located in the top right corner of the page.