Getting started with your portal
Your first hour in a new portal. The setup checklist, what to publish before inviting anyone, and how to see what members will see.
This article is for the administrators who run an organisation's Portava portal.
A new portal is an empty room. The first hour of admin work decides whether the first members to arrive find something worth returning for.
Work through the setup checklist
The Getting started page in your admin area tracks the setup steps in a sensible order. It covers branding, your first content, your member list, and the assistant. You do not have to finish everything before launch.
The checklist is an honest measure of how ready you are. A portal with no upcoming events and an empty resource library is not ready, however good the logo looks.
Publish before you invite
Sequence matters more than speed. Before the first invitation goes out, aim to have two or three upcoming events on the calendar, a handful of published resources, and one news post so the front page is not blank.
Start the resources with the questions members actually ask you. First impressions are cheap to get right and expensive to repeat.
See what members see
Use View as member in the admin bar at every step. Admin screens show you structure. The member view shows you what a first-time visitor finds.
If your own reaction to the member view is a shrug, hold the invitations for a day and fix what caused it.
Bring in a colleague
Admin work sticks better when it is shared. Under Settings → Team you can give a colleague admin access. One of you can own events and communications, and the other the resource library, so neither of you becomes a single point of failure.