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The private portal is a customer-facing site where your users submit requests and follow their progress — without access to your Lane workspace. It’s private: customers sign in with a magic link and see only their own requests (or their company’s), never anyone else’s. Every request they submit becomes Feedback in Lane, so your team manages everything from one place. Portals are hosted at portal.laneapp.co/{your-workspace-slug} and are completely separate from the main Lane app.

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How it works

  1. You enable the portal and share the link with your customers.
  2. Customers sign in with their email via a magic link.
  3. They submit requests and track the status of each one.
  4. Requests appear as feedback in Lane with source: Portal.
  5. As your team updates statuses in Lane, the portal reflects the change automatically through status mapping.

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Enable the portal

  1. Go to Settings → Portal.
  2. Toggle the portal on.
  3. Copy the portal URL and share it with your customers.
When the portal is disabled, the portal URL returns a 404 page.

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Configure

All portal settings are in Settings → Portal and save automatically.

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Design

  • Portal name — the heading at the top of the portal. Defaults to “Requests”.
  • Subtext — a short description shown below the name.
  • Primary colour — the accent colour for buttons and highlights.
  • Lane branding — toggle whether a “Powered by Lane” footer link appears.

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Visibility

Controls what a signed-in customer can see:
  • Personal (default) — customers see only requests they submitted.
  • Company — customers see all portal requests from their company, which helps avoid duplicates.

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Status mapping

The portal shows four fixed status labels to customers — Open, Planned, In Progress, and Done — each mapped to one or more of your internal feedback statuses:
  • Open — automatically maps to your triage status. This can’t be changed.
  • Planned, In Progress, Done — you choose which internal statuses map to each.
Each portal status has a configurable colour. When your team moves feedback to a new status in Lane, the portal updates automatically based on these mappings.

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Customer experience

Signing in — customers enter their email and get a magic link valid for one hour. Clicking it signs them in for 30 days; no password. Submitting requests — after signing in, they click + New request to submit a title and description, and get a confirmation email. On the Lane side this creates feedback with source: Portal and status: Triage, and Lane resolves or creates the company and contact automatically. Tracking requests — the portal groups requests by status. Customers can open any request for detail or delete their own, and the sidebar shows an activity timeline and a completion counter. Profile — customers can update their display name, which reflects on their Lane contact record.

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Best practices

  • Set clear status mappings before sharing the link — customers see these labels, so make them reflect your real workflow.
  • Use company visibility if you want customers at the same organization to see each other’s requests and avoid duplicates.
  • Match the design to your brand — name, subtext, and primary colour make the portal feel native.

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FAQs

Q: Where do portal requests appear in Lane?
A: As feedback with source: Portal. Filter your feedback by source to find them. Q: Can customers see each other’s requests?
A: Only within their own company, and only if you set visibility to Company. Otherwise each customer sees only their own. Q: What happens when I change a request’s status in Lane?
A: The portal status updates automatically based on your mapping, and the customer who submitted it is notified by email. Q: Can I disable the portal without losing data?
A: Yes. Toggling it off makes the URL inaccessible, but all requests remain in Lane as feedback. Q: Do customers need a Lane account?
A: No — they sign in with a magic link tied to their email. No Lane workspace account needed.