Portals

Expert

Exhibitors at your fair, a gallery co-hosting a private view, sponsors with collectors of their own — partners often need to invite guests to your event, and a portal gives each one their own workspace for exactly that, within an allocation you control. Partners invite under their own name, and every response lands on your guest list, labelled with who invited them. You hand out invitation capacity without handing over your admin.

Admins and event managers can create and manage portals. Activating one costs 150 credits, charged once when the portal is connected, and not refunded if you later archive the portal.

Portals in the sidebar opens two pages. Managed Portals is this guide: portal groups and allocations you create for your partners. Connected Portals All plans lists portals another organisation has shared with you. See Using Your Portal.

The pieces

Setting up

1. Open Portals → Managed Portals and create a portal group: name it, write the welcome message partners see, and add a banner. The banner sits at the top of the message at its full height; at least 1500px wide looks best.
2. Add a portal for each partner, then grant allocations: which events or collections they may invite to, and how many guest places on each.
3. Share each portal’s link with its partner.

Invitation replies

By default, a guest who replies to a portal invitation writes to that portal’s Notification email. Set Invitation reply-to on the group if you want every reply in one inbox, such as the fair’s press desk, instead of scattering across each exhibitor.

1. Open Portals → Managed Portals, then the group.
2. Click Settings, open Advanced settings, and enter Invitation reply-to.
3. Click Save changes.

Create the group first, then set it from Settings. Leave it blank to keep replies with each partner. Partners cannot change the address. Their Settings → Email preferences shows it as Reply-to address, reading Set by your organisation. when you have set one.

One thing to be aware of: this only steers replies to invitations. Booking and check-in alerts still go to each portal’s notification email and WhatsApp number.

How a partner claims their portal

The partner opens their portal link, signs in or creates a free ARTSVP account, and connects it to their own organisation. From then on the portal is theirs alone: one portal belongs to one partner organisation, so a partner working two fairs with you claims a portal in each group. Only that organisation’s members can open it. A colleague who is not on the partner’s team sees This portal is locked and can Request access. The request goes to the partner organisation, not to you; they allow it as a team invitation. See Using Your Portal.

Your team keeps oversight from the portal group page, which shows each portal’s status and usage, and the group’s welcome message arrives as the partner’s first inbox message.

Connecting a portal yourself

If an admin of your organisation opens an unconnected portal’s link, you skip the partner welcome and land on the dashboard. That preview does not activate the portal; it stays Inactive on the group page until someone connects it.

To connect it, open Settings. Under Portal information, Organisation reads Not connected. Click Connect. On Connect your portal, choose the organisation that should manage it and click Connect portal. Activation costs 150 credits, charged once, the same as when a partner claims.

One thing to be aware of: connecting locks the portal to that organisation. If you connect it to your own, your team runs it, and a partner can no longer claim it. Create a separate portal when you still need to hand one to a partner.

What partners can do

Inside their portal, a partner can:

• see their allocations and how many places remain;
• invite guests personally, using the same invitation flow your team uses;
• copy an allocation-capped booking link to share more widely;
• watch their own guest list of responses as they arrive, and download it as a Guest List CSV;
• ask you for more places, and message you in the shared inbox.

They cannot see your other guests, your events’ settings, or anything beyond what you allocated.

How allocations are counted

• The unit is guests, not invitations. A booking for four people uses four places, whether it came from one invitation or a booking link.
• Places are held as soon as a booking starts. A booking still in progress counts against the allocation; if it is cancelled, rejected, or times out, the places return. The “remaining” figure a partner sees counts confirmed guests only, so a few more places may be spoken for than it suggests.
• The cap is enforced when a guest books, not when an invitation goes out. Once an allocation is full, the partner’s booking link stops accepting guests and their outstanding invitations can no longer be redeemed. A partner can still create and send invitations against a full allocation, so raise it before they send if you want those places honoured.
• One allocation per portal per event. Grant a partner more places by raising the existing allocation, not by adding a second one.
• Unlimited is a valid setting. Leave the limit empty when a partner should not be capped.

Guests invited by more than one partner

Turn on Force Unique Bookings on the event’s Settings → Advanced tab when you want one booking per email. A guest who already booked and then opens a second partner’s invitation sees Existing Booking Found and can Notify that partner.

Notify spends the second partner’s allocation for the whole party, the same way a new booking would. The guest appears on both partners’ guest lists, and the second partner receives the same booking alerts they would for a new confirmation. The guest then sees the partner’s name followed by Notified.

One thing to be aware of: Notify needs enough remaining places for every guest on the existing booking. If the second allocation cannot cover the party, the guest sees This invite is no longer valid. When they already have a booking, that page also says You already have a booking for this event. and offers Email me my booking link.

Partners still cannot open each other’s guest lists. Only a guest who notifies a second partner appears on both.

Managing allocations

Raise an allocation at any time from the portal group page; lowering it below what is already used does not cancel bookings that exist. Partners can request more places themselves — up to 50 at a time, with an optional note — and the request opens a thread in your shared inbox, where you accept it by raising the allocation.

Once an event has ended it drops out of a partner’s actionable list, though their guest data stays visible. When a portal has served its purpose, archive it to switch it off.

The shared inbox

Every portal has a message thread between your team and the partner. Use it for briefings, allocation requests, and door instructions, so the conversation stays attached to the portal rather than scattered across email.

Turn on Allow allocation increase requests in the portal group settings when you want partners to use Increase allocation. Their requests open a thread in the portal inbox for your team to review.

Partners also get notified as their guests respond. Each portal can receive email and WhatsApp alerts for new bookings and for check-ins; all four are on by default, and the partner controls them — along with the notification email address and phone number — from their portal settings.

Duplicate portal, from a portal’s row menu, copies its allocations and booking links into the same group. The copy is Inactive until it is connected, and the 150-credit activation applies when that happens. Notification email, phone number, and notification preferences are not copied.

The read-only deadline

A portal becomes read-only four months after it is activated. Its settings lock, it can no longer issue booking links, and its existing links are shown as disabled inside the portal; guest data stays readable, and portal group pages show a Read-only badge and let you filter by it. Links the partner already shared keep working until their allocation runs out, so lower the allocation if you need to close a season off completely — and create a new portal for the next season rather than reusing an old one.

Tip: Set allocations slightly below your real ceiling. Raising one takes a moment, but places already promised are hard to take back.

Keep reading: Using Your Portal · Exhibitors and allocations · Booking Settings · Invitations · Billing and credits