# External users

> How your customer signs in to the portal, what they can do in a shared playbook, and which notifications they get.

A customer contact with a portal account is an **external user**. This page explains their side, so you can tell your customer what to expect.

## Signing in

1. The contact gets an invitation email and sets a password from it.
2. From then on they sign in with their email address and password on the normal CustomerCatalyst sign-in page. They land in their portal, not in your workspace.

Forgot the password? They can reset it from the sign-in page.

## Projects

**Your projects** lists the playbooks shared with them that are still running, each with its status (**In progress** or **Overdue**), owner, **Applied** date, **Due Date**, current **Stage** and progress. Finished playbooks are under **Completed**. With nothing shared yet, they see *"No projects yet"*.

Clicking a project opens it.

## Inside a shared playbook

At the top, **Your next step** shows their earliest open task and its due date (or *"You're all caught up"*), with progress as *"… of … steps done"*. Progress only counts tasks they can see.

They can:

- **Tasks**: see the visible tasks of every stage, including stages that haven't started, and tick a task to mark it done.
- **Discussions**: read visible messages, post messages, and mention team members with `@`.
- **Team**: see who is on the playbook, with names and titles.
- **Files**: download visible files and upload their own. Files they upload are visible to your team.
- **Contact the owner**: **Contact** *owner name* opens a form, *"Your message is sent privately to … by email. Replies come to your inbox."* The mail icon on a team card does the same for that person.

They can't create, edit or delete tasks, complete stages, change the owner, add or remove people, or see anything you haven't made visible.

## Settings

Under **Settings** they have two items:

- **Account settings**: their own account.
- **Notifications**: how they're notified (**Email**, **Bell**) and about what.

## Notifications they can get

Only these notifications are available to external users:

- **Invited to playbook**: when they're added to another playbook (new users get the invitation email instead).
- **Task Assigned**: when a task is assigned to them.
- **Task Approaches Due Date**: one day before one of their tasks is due.
- **Tagged in playbook**: when someone mentions them.
- **New message in playbook**: when someone posts a message they can see.

They're never notified about internal notes or tasks hidden from them. Links in their notifications open the playbook in their portal.

## Removing an external user

See [Share a playbook](/customer-portal/share-a-playbook/#remove-one-contact): remove them from one playbook on its **Team** tab, or from all playbooks with **Remove access** on the contact.