Sharing work with clients and team
Sharing happens in two places — workspace membership for your team, and the portal for external clients. Both scope by file category: people see only the categories you grant on each case.
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Sharing happens in two places — workspace membership for your team, and the portal for external clients. Both scope by file category: people see only the categories you grant on each case.
Your team works inside the dashboard at /. Clients work inside the portal at /portal. On every case, sharing happens through two peer panels — Team for workspace workers, Clients for external collaborators.
Core concepts
Workspace members
Anyone on the Team list in Settings → Account. Members hold one of four roles — Owner, Member, Worker, or Client (see Workspace roles). A member invited via Settings → Team starts with Assigned cases only off (sees every case); a worker added the first time via a case's Team panel starts with the toggle on (sees only assigned cases). Either default can be flipped from the worker's profile. See Restricting worker access for the full mechanics.
Per-case collaborators
A collaborator is someone added to one specific case. Workers go in the Team panel; clients go in the Clients panel. Scope is the list of file categories you grant.
Category-based visibility
Every share — Team assignment or Client invite — stores a list of visible categories. That single list drives files, the activity timeline, inbox chips, and AI chat tool results. No per-field toggles to juggle.
Two outbound paths — know which you're using
Adding a Client to a case sends a real email directly from Document Blueprint with a portal sign-in link. The user does not review or send it — it's an instant invite, like any SaaS team-invite flow.
The Send / Compose Draft button on a case header is the other path: that one creates a real Gmail draft in your own Gmail mailbox via the Gmail Drafts API, with {to, cc, subject, body, attachments} pre-filled. The draft opens in Gmail's compose view in a new tab, and you review and click Send from inside Gmail yourself. Send templates feed that path, not the Clients panel. You'll need your own Gmail connected at Settings → Integrations, and your workspace admin must have granted you the Compose Emails capability at Settings → Team. See How notifications work for the full picture of what triggers a real email vs. a Gmail draft vs. an in-app bell notification.
Send templates
A send template is a saved share preset: a tokenized subject, a default body, and source rules (per-file-category attach/link modes). Build a few per workspace and stop reconfiguring each share. Note: who-sees-what (visible categories) and which-forms-the-client-can-fill are per-collaborator settings on the case's Clients panel, not on the send template.
Forms to fill
Clients do work from the portal by filling form templates you expose to them. Per-client control: you decide which forms appear for which client on which case. Submissions write back to the case fields and land on the activity timeline.
Walkthrough: sharing a case with a client
A permit application is ready for the client to review and submit an intake form.
- Open the case in the dashboard.
- In the Clients panel, click the send icon.
- Enter the client's email (e.g.
vendor@example.com) and pick the visible categories —permit. - Click Send. Document Blueprint sends them a real email directly with a portal sign-in link — no Gmail draft step, no review on your end.
- Expand the new client row and pick Manage forms from the
⋯menu. - Toggle on the Intake form template. It now appears in the client's portal under Forms to fill.
Common patterns
Send templates per workspace
Each workspace tends to have 2–4 send template variants — Initial review for client, Send for signature, Status update. Build them once and reuse forever.
Workspace vs portal stays split
Don't try to give clients dashboard access. The dashboard is internal; the portal is external. The same email can be a Worker in your workspace and a Client in another — they're independent seats.
Restrict workers in two layers
Workers can be restricted to assigned cases (layer 1, member profile) and — within each assigned case — to a subset of categories (layer 2, case Team panel). See restricting worker access.
Per-case scope is the default
There's no workspace-wide collaborator role. Scope always happens at the case level.
Troubleshooting
Client can't sign in to the portal. Check the email used when adding them — portal sign-in matches by exact email.
Client sees files you didn't intend. Open their row in the Clients panel, pick Edit visibility, uncheck the categories. Changes apply on next page load.
Compose Draft button is missing or says "Ask your workspace admin". Your workspace admin hasn't granted you the Compose Emails capability. Ask them to flip the toggle on your member row at Settings → Team. Workspace owners always have the capability; members default to having it; workers and clients default to not having it.
Compose Draft says "Connect your Gmail to compose". You have permission but haven't connected your personal Gmail yet. Click the connect button to walk through the one-time OAuth at Settings → Integrations — the same Gmail connection used by inbound automations. Once connected, the Open Gmail Draft button replaces the connect CTA.
The single-file Share button doesn't open the share sheet. Your browser or device doesn't support the Web Share API. On desktop, try Chrome, Edge, or Safari. On older browsers, the file Share button may fall back to copying the file link to your clipboard. This applies only to the single-file Share button in the file review modal — the Compose Draft path uses Gmail directly and doesn't depend on the Web Share API.
A worker can see cases they shouldn't. Assigned cases only can be toggled per worker in Settings → Account → Team. The default depends on how they joined — see Restricting worker access for the full default-by-path table. With the toggle on, they still see every case they're assigned to — use per-case category visibility to scope inside each one.