A Portal in Zoho Creator is a web-accessible interface that allows external users — people outside your Zoho organisation such as customers, partners, or vendors — to interact with specific parts of your application. Portal users access only the forms and reports you designate, with permissions you define, without being full members of your Zoho account.
Internal app access is for your employees who have Zoho Creator user licenses. Portal access extends the application to external parties at a lower cost per user. A customer self-service portal, a vendor submission portal, or a partner deal registration portal are all common Zoho Creator portal use cases.
Portal users can authenticate via Zoho accounts, Google accounts, or custom credentials (username/password pairs managed by your application). You control which forms and reports each portal user can access based on their role, and optionally restrict them to seeing only their own records.
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