Why the portal has a Calendar and a Timeline
Two calendar-shaped modules in one portal looks redundant until you use both. They answer different questions and, more importantly, they carry different data.
| Calendar | Timeline | |
|---|---|---|
| Views | Month grid only | Month, week, and day |
| Task-level dates | Yes, individual tasks with due dates | No, projects and milestones only |
| Invoice due dates | Yes, with amount and status | No |
| Project start dates | Yes | No |
| Can the client add anything? | Yes, as a request | No, read-only |
| Search | No | Yes, across title, project, and agency |
So the honest summary is this. The Calendar is denser and interactive; it is the right screen when you want to know what is happening in one month and possibly do something about it. The Timeline is broader and faster to scan; it is the right screen when you want to look further out than the month you are in.
Six kinds of date that appear on their own
Nobody configures this grid. When a client opens it, the portal reaches into every agency they are connected to and assembles the month from whatever is dated there.
| Source | How it appears |
|---|---|
| Project started | Stamped from the date the project was created, so the calendar shows when an engagement actually began rather than only when it is due. |
| Project deadline | The due date on the project, labelled as a project deadline and titled with the project name. |
| Milestone | Every dated milestone on every project, labelled with the project it belongs to so two similarly named checkpoints never get confused. |
| Task | Individual project tasks that carry a due date, labelled with their parent project. This is the level of detail the Timeline leaves out. |
| Invoice due date | Titled with the invoice number, and showing the amount and current status together, so you can see that an invoice is due and whether it has been settled without leaving the grid. |
| Your own requests | Any date you have asked for, carrying its approval state and the kind of request it was. |
The invoice entry is the one agencies underestimate. An invoice due date sitting on a client’s own calendar, with the amount and the word paid or sent beside it, does more for collection than a reminder email does — because it is there when the client happens to be looking, rather than arriving when they are busy. If chasing payment is a recurring drain, the same logic is worked through in how to track client payments.
The task entry is the other one worth noting. Because the Calendar reads tasks as well as milestones, a project that is planned in detail on the agency side produces a genuinely informative client calendar without anyone writing a status update. That is a good argument for putting real due dates on tasks in Projects.
Asking for a date: the five request types
The request form opens with a type selector, and the type is not cosmetic. It is the fastest signal a client has for telling an agency what kind of time they are asking for, which is the difference between a well-prepared session and a call where everyone works out the purpose in the first ten minutes.
| Type | When to choose it |
|---|---|
| Meeting Request | A working session with people in a room or on a video call. The default when the modal opens, and the right pick for anything with an agenda. |
| Call Request | A shorter, lighter conversation. Useful when you want ten minutes of a project lead rather than a scheduled meeting with the whole team. |
| Review Session | Time booked specifically to walk through work. Choosing this instead of Meeting tells your agency to bring the work, not a status update. |
| Preferred Deadline | Not a conversation at all. This is how you tell an agency a date matters to you, such as a board meeting or a campaign launch you are working backwards from. |
| Other | The catch-all for anything the four above do not describe. The description field carries the weight here, so write more than you normally would. |
Preferred Deadline deserves a moment. It is the only one of the five that is not a request for someone’s attention, and it is the most under-used. A client who tells their agency in writing, on a date, that something has to be ready before a board meeting has changed the shape of the project far more cheaply than a client who mentions it in passing on a call.
Every field in the request form
The form is short on purpose, and each field has a job.
- Agency — only shown when you are connected to more than one. Required, and it determines who receives the request.
- Title — required. This is the line your agency reads first, so “Q2 campaign kickoff” beats “meeting”.
- Type — one of the five above, defaulting to Meeting Request.
- Date — required. Without it the form will not submit.
- Time — optional, and the omission is meaningful. Leave it blank and the request is filed as an all-day item, which is exactly right for a preferred deadline and slightly rude for a meeting.
- Description — optional, and the field that separates a useful request from a vague one. Put the context, the attendees, and the decision you need here.
Three of those six are required: agency, title, and date. Submit without one and the form tells you rather than sending something half-formed.
Pending, approved, declined
A request has exactly three states, and each is drawn as a coloured dot so the state is readable from the month grid without opening anything.
- Pending, amber. The state every request starts in. The dot pulses rather than sitting still, which is a small design decision that does real work: an unresolved request looks unresolved.
- Approved, emerald. The agency has accepted the date. The dot goes solid green and stops moving.
- Declined, red. The agency has said no to that slot. The entry stays on your calendar rather than vanishing, so there is a record that you asked and a prompt to propose something else.
Two details make this trustworthy in practice. First, the request appears on your own calendar the moment you send it, so there is never a gap where you wonder whether it went through. Second, the portal keeps a live subscription to your requests for each agency, so an approval lands on your grid without a refresh. Alongside the status, the entry shows the type of request you made, so a declined item tells you both what you asked for and what happened to it.
Opening a single date
The grid is drawn as a full six-week block, with the tail of the previous month and the head of the next one greyed at the edges. That fixed height is why the layout never jumps as you page through months.
Clicking a date opens the list of everything on it: the project deadlines, the milestones, the tasks, the invoices, and your own requests, each with the agency it belongs to and its detail line. Navigation is three controls — back a month, forward a month, and a Today button that returns you to the current month from wherever you have wandered.
Which agency a request goes to
For a client working with one agency this is invisible: everything on the grid belongs to that agency, and a request can only go to them. For a client working with several, the calendar is a merged view and the agency selector becomes the most important field in the form.
Each entry on the grid names the agency it came from, and every request is written against one specific agency workspace. There is no shared, cross-agency event, which is the correct behaviour: agencies working with the same client should not be able to see each other’s bookings. The same principle runs through the rest of the portal, and the mechanics of connecting to more than one agency are covered in Find an Agency.
Let clients ask for time without emailing you
Start free in minutes, or log in to your Arpixa workspace. See pricing for plan details.
Nothing on this screen is a paid add-on. Arpixa charges per workspace rather than per module, across four tiers — a free one, $12 a month, $29 a month, and $89 a month — and what separates them is how many clients you can run. Details on the pricing page.
How to send a request
Start to finish, it is a short form and a wait.
- Open Calendar in the portal and find the month you want the date in.
- Start a request. If you are connected to more than one agency, pick which one it goes to first.
- Give the request a clear title, because that title is what your agency sees in their notification.
- Choose one of the five request types so the agency knows what kind of time you are asking for.
- Set the date, and add a time only if the time matters. Leaving time blank files it as an all-day request.
- Add a description with the context an agency would otherwise have to ask you for.
- Send the request, then watch the amber dot on that date turn green when it is approved.
For agencies reading this: the approve-or-decline step is the part that makes the feature worth having. A request that sits pending for a week teaches clients to email you instead, and the whole point of the portal is to stop that. The agency-side scheduling picture, including the booking page, is covered in Calendar and in appointment scheduling for client work.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between the Calendar and the Timeline in the client portal?
The Calendar is a month grid you can write to; the Timeline is a multi-view calendar you can only read. The Calendar also carries two kinds of date the Timeline does not: individual project tasks with due dates, and invoice due dates with their amount and status. The Timeline in exchange offers week and day views and a search box. Use the Calendar to ask for a date, and the Timeline to scan a long horizon.
Can a client add an event to the calendar in Arpixa?
A client can request one, which is a deliberate distinction. Submitting the form creates a request against a specific agency with a pending status rather than writing a confirmed event onto a shared calendar. The agency then approves or declines it, and the status on your grid changes to match. Nobody can book time on an agency without their agreement.
What happens after I send a calendar request?
You get an immediate confirmation that the request was sent and the agency notified, and the request appears on your own calendar straight away carrying a pending state. The agency receives it in their workspace and can approve or decline. Your copy updates through a live subscription, so the state changes without you refreshing.
How do I know whether my request was approved?
By the colour of the dot on that date. Pending is amber and gently pulses so it reads as unresolved, approved is a solid emerald, and declined is red. Opening the day shows the same state written out in words next to the type of request you made.
Do calendar requests send my agency an email?
The request is delivered as a notification inside the agency workspace, and you are told the agency has been notified. Treat it as an in-app hand-off rather than a guaranteed email. If a date is genuinely urgent, send a line in Messages as well so it lands in a second place.
Why can I see invoice due dates on my calendar?
Because a due date is a date, and hiding it from the calendar is how invoices get missed. Each one shows the invoice number as the title with the amount and current status as the detail, so a paid invoice reads as paid where you happen to be looking. Payment itself happens in Invoices.
Does the calendar have week and day views?
No. The Calendar is a month grid only, drawn as a full six-week block so the layout never jumps between months. To read a single date you click it and a list of everything on that date appears. For week and day views, use the Timeline instead.
What does the calendar show before I am connected to an agency?
An empty state explaining that connecting with agencies is what fills the calendar with project deadlines, invoice due dates, and milestones, plus a button that takes you straight to the connection screen. There is nothing to configure; the grid populates itself once a connection exists.