How to Share a GIS Project With Clients Without Accounts

To share a GIS project with a client without giving them an account, create a read-only share link. The client opens the link in a browser, sees the project map and data, and never has to sign up. In Geosys AI, every link has a required expiry date and an optional password, and you decide whether guests can comment and how many AI questions they can ask. You can revoke the link at any time.

If you serve a client with several projects, a customer portal gathers all of them behind one link. This guide covers both, along with the controls that keep client access safe. The full overview is on the client delivery page.

Why not just add clients as users?

Adding every client as a user works, but it brings friction:

• Clients have to create an account and remember another password.
• Access stays open until someone remembers to remove it.
• It is easy to give a client more permissions than they need.
• One-off deliveries, such as a final map for a single report, do not justify an account at all.

A link solves this: it is limited in what it allows, it ends on its own, and the client just clicks.

Share links: one project, one link

A share link gives guests read-only access to a single project. Project owners and project admins create the links, and each link has its own settings:

• Name. Label each link by recipient, such as "Client review, October", so you can tell them apart later.
• Required expiry date. Every link expires. There is no permanent link by accident, and an expired link stops working.
• Optional password. Guests enter it on a dedicated page before they can open the project.
• Comments on or off. You choose whether guests can leave comments.
• AI question budget. Set a limit for how many AI questions guests can ask through the link, or switch AI off.

You can list your links, edit their settings and revoke a link at any time. Revoked links become inactive immediately.

Set a sensible expiry

Because expiry is required, pick one that matches the purpose. A link for a design review might last two weeks. A link for a final delivery might last a few months. When it lapses, you can create a fresh link and know that the old one is dead.

Add a password for sensitive work

Send the link and the password through separate channels, for example the link by email and the password by message. Password attempts and link visits are rate limited, which makes guessing impractical.

Comments: feedback where it belongs

When comments are on, guests can pin a text comment at a location on the map and reply to threads. This keeps feedback attached to the place it is about, instead of scattered over email. Guests give a display name, and their comments are text only. They cannot attach photos, mention people, resolve threads or delete anything. Those actions stay with your team.

If you want a strictly read-only review, switch comments off and guests cannot post on the project.

The AI question budget

Geosys AI lets people ask questions of a project in plain language. For a guest link, you control how much of that they get. The budget is a lifetime allowance for the link:

• No limit set means unlimited questions.
• Zero switches AI off for that link.
• Any other number caps the total questions.

The budget is shared across the life of the link, not reset each visit. This gives you a way to let a client explore, without an open-ended amount of AI use on a link that might be forwarded.

Customer portals: one link for all of a client's projects

If a client has several projects with you, one link per project becomes hard to manage. A customer portal solves that.

1. Create a customer for the client.
2. Assign projects to that customer. A project belongs to at most one customer.
3. Create a portal for the customer.

The portal opens on a home page of project cards, with a project switcher to move between projects. Portals have their own password, expiry date, AI budget and comment setting, just like a share link.

Two details make portals easy to run:

• Changes take effect immediately. The project list is read live, so assigning a project makes it appear and unassigning it makes it disappear right away.
• You choose how guest state carries over. A portal can keep a guest's state when they switch projects, or start fresh on each switch.

Customers and portals are available to every organization type, not only resellers.

Guest isolation: clients never see each other

Sharing safely means guests cannot interfere with each other. Every guest gets an isolated session:

• Analysis results and temporary outputs are tagged to the guest, so each guest sees only their own output plus the shared project data.
• Guests are read-only. They can view and ask questions, but they cannot upload, edit or delete.
• Sessions end after 60 minutes of inactivity, and a guest's temporary files are cleaned up when the session ends or the guest logs out.
• Guests can reach only a limited set of actions, and everything else is denied by default.

This is why you can send the same link to several people at a client without one person's questions or results appearing to another. For the wider picture of access and data control, read Security and trust.

White-label: deliver under your own brand

If you run Geosys AI for your own clients, you can deliver it as your own product. Branding is configured per organization, including logo, colors and theme, and each organization gets its own sign-in page. You can group projects under customers to run many client relationships in one organization. Interface translations are available in English, Spanish, German, French and Dutch.

A practical delivery checklist

1. Finish the project and review the layers guests will see.
2. Decide between a single link and a portal.
3. Set an expiry that matches the purpose.
4. Add a password if the work is sensitive.
5. Decide whether guests can comment.
6. Set an AI budget, or switch AI off.
7. Send the link, and revoke it when the engagement ends.

FAQs

Do clients need an account to open a share link? No. Guests open the link in a browser with no account. They get read-only access to the shared project.

Does a share link expire? Yes. Every link and portal has a required expiry date, and expired or revoked links stop working.

Can I limit how much AI a guest can use? Yes. Each link and portal has a lifetime AI question budget. You can leave it unlimited, cap it at a number, or set it to zero to switch AI off.

Can guests see each other's work? No. Each guest has an isolated session, so a guest sees only their own results and the shared project data.

What is the difference between a share link and a portal? A share link opens a single project. A customer portal opens all the projects assigned to one customer, with a home page and project switcher.