AI apps in the client portal

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People at your clients can connect an AI app, such as Claude, to the client portal, and ask it to look up their invoices, open a ticket, or check a device. The app works as that person, with their portal permissions and nothing more. This page explains how it works, what it can never do, and how you control it.

How it works

The portal serves the Model Context Protocol (MCP) at https://<portal-address>/portal/mcp, where <portal-address> is your portal’s address or custom domain.

Sign-in. The app signs in with OAuth. The person signs in to the portal in their browser, sees the name the app gave itself, chooses one organization, and selects Connect. The app never sees their password.
One organization. A connection reaches one organization. To use the app with another, the person connects it again.
Their permissions. Each tool is one portal action, and the app can use only those the person’s roles allow, within your ceiling.
A record of every change. Changes the app makes appear in the client’s activity log with via AI assistant and the app’s name.
Their control. The person sees and disconnects their apps under Your account > Connected AI apps. Suspending or offboarding them, resetting their password, or locking their account disconnects their apps.
A limited lifetime. A connection lasts up to 90 days. If you set Longest session, hours below its default of 12, connections made after that last no longer than it. See Portal defaults.

What an app can never do

These are never tools, whatever the person’s permissions:

Paying an invoice, saving or removing a payment method, and turning autopay on or off.
Anything to do with signing in: passwords, second factors, passkeys, and sessions.
Starting a remote session.
Exporting the activity log.
Switching organization, or managing connected apps.

What needs the person’s confirmation

Before the app does any of these, the person confirms it on the Approve an AI action page in the portal, which shows the action and its details:

Accepting or declining a quote or a project milestone.
Answering an approval request.
Sending a leaver request.
Inviting, changing, or removing people, and changing roles and groups.
Changing remote access grants or the client’s remote access rules.

Approving asks the person to confirm who they are again when they have been idle.

How you control it

AI apps in the portal follow your rules on Settings > AI. They cannot connect when Allow AI tools to connect is off under AI tools (MCP), when your client policy is Off for all clients, or when AI access is off for that client. See Connect AI tools with MCP.

Calls are limited per connection and per person to 120 a minute.

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