The three views, and when each earns its keep
A view switcher sits at the top of the screen with three options. The default is the list, and most clients never leave it. The other two are worth knowing about because they answer different questions.
List is a responsive grid of project cards, one to three across depending on screen width. It is the best view for a client with a handful of projects who wants to read detail rather than shape.
Board arranges the same projects into four columns by stage. This is the view for a client with a dozen live projects who wants to know how much is stuck in review and how much has genuinely shipped. It is a summary of projects, not a task board, and that distinction is the whole reason it is safe to show a client.
Timeline plots projects against dates in a Gantt-style layout. It answers the question a list cannot: are these things happening in sequence or all at once? For a client coordinating several workstreams, or several agencies, this is often the only view that reveals a collision before it happens.
All three read from the same merged set, and every card names the agency the project belongs to. The screen’s own subtitle sets the expectation plainly: it tracks assigned projects across every connected agency.
How the four board columns are worked out
This is the part of the module that most rewards understanding, because it explains behaviour that otherwise looks arbitrary. The four columns are not a separate field that someone sets. They are derived from the wording of the project status by matching on keywords, in a fixed order.
| Column | Matched when the status contains |
|---|---|
| Completed | complete, done, or delivered |
| In Review | review, approval, or feedback |
| In Progress | progress, active, or working |
| Pending | anything else, including an empty status |
Two practical consequences follow. First, the matching is generous: a status of “Awaiting client approval” lands in In Review without anyone mapping it, and “Actively building” lands in In Progress. Second, the order matters. A status that reads “Delivered, in review” is tested against Completed first, so it will sit in Completed.
For agencies, the takeaway is that the status wording you use in your project workspace is doing client-facing work. Plain statuses built around those keywords give clients a board that sorts itself. Invented vocabulary that avoids all four groups quietly piles everything into Pending, which is the one column that makes an agency look idle.
Inside a single project
Opening a project switches to a detail screen labelled the Shared Project Timeline — shared being the operative word. The header carries the project name with its current status as a badge, and the body splits into two tabs.
The first tab, Timeline & Activity, is the default. It leads with progress and milestones, so the first thing a client sees is how far along the work is and which checkpoints are behind or ahead. Below that runs the activity for the project, which is what turns a static status into something a client can trust: movement they can see, rather than a percentage they have to take on faith.
The second tab, Tasks & Requests, is covered below. Between the two, the client has both the summary and the detail, without either one requiring an email.
The Tasks & Requests tab
This tab lists the tasks on the project and adds one control: Request Task.
That button is quietly one of the most useful things in the portal. The alternative, in almost every agency, is a client sending a one-line email that says “can we also add a favicon”, which then has to be read, understood, attributed to the right project, and written down by someone on the agency side. Raising it here skips all four steps, because the request is created from inside the project it belongs to.
It is a request, not a task. The agency decides what happens to it, which keeps a client from silently expanding scope. If your agency regularly loses small asks in email threads, the pattern is worth deliberately teaching clients — see how to keep clients updated for the wider habit.
Projects a client starts themselves
A client can raise a whole project, not just a task. The form is short by design, and every field is doing a job:
- Agency — which of their connections the project is for. Required when there is more than one.
- Project name — prompted with an example like “Website Redesign”, which nudges clients towards a name rather than a sentence.
- Description — prompted with “what do you want to achieve with this project?”, which is a much better question than asking a client for requirements.
- Due date — optional.
On submit, the project is created inside that agency’s workspace with a Pending status and a record that a client created it, and the client sees a confirmation naming the agency it went to. It appears on their board in the Pending column immediately.
If the brief is bigger than a name and a paragraph, the right tool is a different one: Brief Builder exists for structured briefs with goals, budget, audience, and attachments. Use a project request for “we want this thing” and a brief for “here is everything you need to quote it”.
What a client can and cannot do
Portals get this wrong in both directions. Too locked down and clients go back to email; too open and they can rewrite work that is already underway. Here is exactly where Arpixa draws the line.
| Action | Allowed? | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| See every project assigned to them | Yes | Across every connected agency, merged into one screen with the agency named on each card. |
| Request a new project | Yes | Creates a project against one chosen agency with a Pending status and a note recording that a client created it. |
| Edit a project | Only their own, only while Pending | Name, description, and due date. The moment the agency moves it out of Pending, editing stops. |
| Delete a project | Only their own, only while Pending | Same rule as editing. A project the agency has started working on cannot be deleted by the client. |
| Request a task inside a project | Yes | From the Tasks & Requests tab of a project, so the request arrives attached to the right work rather than as a loose message. |
| Change a project status | No | Status is the agency’s to set. It is what drives which board column the project appears in. |
| Reorder or reassign tasks | No | The client view is not a shared task board. Assignment and sequencing stay with the agency. |
| See internal notes or costs | No | Cost lines, margin, internal notes, and the agency’s own task columns are not part of this view. |
The rule worth repeating, because it is the cleverest part: edit and delete require both that the client created the project and that it is still Pending. The second condition is what makes the first one safe. A client can fix a typo in a request they just sent, and cannot touch a project the agency has started. Nobody has to negotiate that boundary, because the software enforces it the moment a status changes.
Give clients a project view they can act in
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Client capacity, not features, is what differs between Arpixa plans. The free tier carries one client, Starter costs $12 a month and carries twelve, and Pro at $29 and Advanced at $89 have no client limit. Current numbers live on the pricing page.
Export Report, and rating the agency
Two actions sit in the project header, and one of them only appears at the right moment.
Export Report is always available. It matters because the person who needs to see progress is often not the person with portal access — a finance director, a board, a franchise owner. Handing a client a report they can forward is more useful than asking them to describe what they saw.
Rate Agency appears only once the project status reads Completed. That timing is the point. Asking for a rating mid-project measures mood; asking at delivery measures outcome. For agencies, it is also the cheapest moment to collect the evidence you will later want in a proposal, and it lands while the work is still fresh. The wider version of this argument is in how to spot clients at risk of leaving.
How to request a project
- Open My Projects in the portal and start a new project request.
- Choose the agency it should go to if you are connected to more than one.
- Name the project in the words you would use to describe it to a colleague.
- Write what you want to achieve in the description, not how you want it built.
- Set a due date if you have one, and leave it blank if you genuinely do not.
- Send it. The project lands with the agency as Pending, and you can still edit it until they pick it up.
Once the agency picks it up, the request stops being yours to change and starts being work. Deliverables produced against it show up in Deliverables, and its dates appear on the Timeline.
Frequently asked questions
What is Master Projects in the Arpixa client portal?
It is the client-side project screen, titled Master Projects, that tracks every project assigned to a client across every agency they are connected to. It can be read as a card list, a four-column board, or a Gantt-style timeline, and each project opens into its own shared timeline with progress, milestones, activity, and a tasks tab.
Can a client create a project in Arpixa?
Yes, but it arrives as a request rather than as live work. A client-created project is written against one specific agency, starts with a Pending status, and is tagged as client-created. The agency decides whether it becomes real work by moving it forward. Until they do, the client can still edit or withdraw it.
Can a client edit or delete a project they created?
Only while it is still Pending, and only if they created it themselves. Two conditions have to hold: the project must be client-created, and its status must still be Pending. Once an agency moves it into progress, the edit and delete controls disappear, which prevents a client from quietly changing the scope of work that is already underway.
How are the four board columns decided?
They are derived from the project status text rather than stored separately. Anything containing complete, done, or delivered lands in Completed. Anything containing review, approval, or feedback lands in In Review. Anything containing progress, active, or working lands in In Progress. Everything else, including a blank status, falls into Pending.
Does the client see the same board as the agency?
No. The agency board is a working task board; the client board is a four-column summary of projects. A client never sees task columns, assignees, internal notes, or cost and margin figures. What they see is the project, its status, its progress, its milestones, and the activity recorded against it.
What is in the Tasks & Requests tab?
The tasks on that project, plus a Request Task button. It is the place a client raises something small and specific without opening a conversation about it, and because the request is made from inside a project, it arrives already attached to the right piece of work.
Can a client export a project report?
Yes. Each project detail view has an Export Report action, which is useful when a client needs to show progress to someone who does not have portal access, such as a finance team or a board.
What happens when a project is finished?
Once a project status reads Completed, a Rate Agency button appears in that project. It only shows on completed work, which is a deliberate choice: feedback is asked for at the point a client can actually judge the outcome rather than halfway through.