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For anyone deciding what the portal’s navigation should be before filling it with content.
Tabs are the only navigation a partner portal has, so they are the whole information architecture. Get them right and a partner finds what they came for without reading. Get them wrong and you end up with a home tab that is a wall, or nine tabs a partner scans every visit because none of them is obviously the one. This guide covers the structure decision and every control a tab carries.

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What you’ll achieve

A navigation a partner can use on their first visit: a small set of tabs named for what a partner wants rather than how your program is organised, each with the right visibility, and a home tab that leads with the next action.

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Before you start

1

Open an experience

Go to Experience builder and open one. Tabs run across the top of the builder; each one has a … menu.
2

Know your sections

Structure is easier once you know what can go on a page. See Every section you can add to a portal.
3

Have segments defined, if you plan to restrict tabs

Restricting a tab needs an audience to restrict it to. See Create a dynamic segment.

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Steps

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Decide the structure

1

Start from four or five tabs, not nine

A partner visits with one of a handful of jobs: register something, find content, check what they have earned, learn something, see where a deal stands. Most programs land on Home, Deals, Content, Training and Rewards or their equivalents, and that is enough. Add the sixth tab only when a real job has nowhere to live.Tabs cost more than sections do. A crowded section is skimmed; a wrong tab is a dead end a partner has to back out of.
2

Name tabs for the partner's job

Name them for what a partner is trying to do, not for the Introw feature behind them or your internal team structure. Register a deal beats Forms. Get paid beats Commissions. Sell with us beats Enablement. A partner has never read your org chart and will not guess which internal word maps to their task.
3

Make the home tab answer 'what now'

The home tab is the only page you can be sure a partner sees. Lead with the single next action for the partner in front of you, then their status, then everything else. In practice that means a hero or a call to action at the top, their tasks and goals under it, and announcements below that. Everything else earns its way onto another tab.
4

Use one portal with restricted tabs before you build two portals

Two partner types rarely need two portals. They usually need the same portal with one or two tabs each cannot see, which is one experience to maintain rather than two that drift. Build a second experience only when the difference is most of the portal. See Restrict a tab to segments.

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Work the controls on a tab

1

Reorder by dragging

Drag a tab along the bar to move it. Order is the strongest signal in the whole portal, because partners read left to right and stop early, so put the tab you want used second from the left rather than last.
2

Rename, duplicate and remove

The tab’s … menu carries Rename, Duplicate and Remove.Duplicate is the fast way to build a variant: copy the tab, then restrict each copy to a different segment. Remove is greyed out on the last remaining tab, since an experience needs one.Treat Remove carefully. On the next publish, a removed tab disappears from every partner’s portal along with the documents on it. See Draft, published and preview.
3

Choose between hiding and restricting

Both take a tab away from partners, and they are for different things.
  • Hide in shared view hides it from every partner, while your team still sees it flagged in the builder. This is the one for a tab you are still building, or one you keep for internal reference.
  • Manage access sets the tab’s access policy to Anyone or Restricted, and a restricted tab needs one or more Required segments. This is the one for a tab only some partners should see.
A partner in any of the chosen segments sees the tab, and belonging to a narrower segment as well never takes it away: visibility resolves to the most permissive segment a partner is in. That is what makes layered segments work rather than fight each other.
4

Set the layout to match the content

Layout offers three widths, and the right one follows what is on the page.
  • Centered for reading. Text, announcements, an introduction.
  • Expanded for a mix of copy and data.
  • Full width for tables and dashboards, where a centred column wastes half the screen. A pipeline or an embedded dashboard almost always wants this.
Background color sets a colour behind the tab, with a clear option to return to the default. Use it sparingly: one tinted tab reads as deliberate, five read as a theme nobody chose.
5

Link straight to a tab

A portal URL takes a tab in a stage query parameter, so https://your-portal-domain/?stage={tabId} opens the portal on that tab. Use it from a marketing email or an intranet page. Inside the portal, a call-to-action button does the same with Go to tab, and can also open a form or an asset directly, which is how the home tab hands a partner off without them hunting for the right tab.

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Verify it worked

Preview the experience as a real partner and check the navigation alone, before the content: are the tabs in the order you meant, does a restricted tab appear only for a partner in that segment, and is the tab you most want used within the first two positions. If a tab shows a broken-restriction warning, the segment it pointed at was deleted. Pick a live segment or set the tab back to Anyone, because a restriction pointing at nothing is not a safe default to leave in place.

Every section you can add to a portal

What goes on each tab.

Restrict a tab to segments

Segment-gated navigation in detail.

Layer segments to progressively unlock

How overlapping segments resolve.

Implementation reference

Full configuration options.