Replaced expiring email links with a centralized, role-based SharePoint hub for a healthcare nonprofit, cutting 100+ hours/week of manual provisioning across 20+ partner orgs.
Product
PCC Partner Portal
Skills
Product design, Stakeholder management, User research & testing
My role
Product Designer
Team
UX Team, Operation Team, Development Team, and other Program Team directors
Tool
Figma, Sharepoint, Weebly, Trello
Key metrics
Reduced 100+ hours/week of manual user provisioning across 20+ partner organizations
Reduced task completion time by 34%
80% Key feature adoption rate
Context
PCC staff spent hours every week manually managing access and chasing files, and external partners regularly overwrote critical data because there were no real access controls.
What's the problem? What are the goals?
📈 Business Needs
PCC needed a secure, cost-effective portal that could handle high-volume partner file exchange while eliminating repetitive manual admin.
❓Problem to Solve
Staff wasted hours manually adding users, managing expired links, and chasing files, while the lack of strict access controls left critical data vulnerable to accidental overwriting by external partners.
📍Project Goal
Build a secure client portal with SharePoint, integrated into PCC's site with automated syncing, giving partners permanent, self-service file access at minimal licensing cost.
🪨 Challenge
Integrate the entire system within PCC's existing Microsoft SharePoint ecosystem, simple enough for low technical literacy and high partner turnover.
Solutions
I designed a centralized partner portal and optimized the SharePoint architecture focused on security, reliability, and reducing administrative friction.
Problem
Solution
Accidental Overwriting/Deletion
Strict Folder Structuring (From PCC vs. Upload)
Manual Sorting & Individual Adding
"Push-Pull" Automation & Permission Groups
Lost Links & 30-Day Expirations Rules
Centralized Hub & Audience Targeting
Process
Research Systemic Root Causes
I ran 6 stakeholder interviews across Operations and 5 Program teams plus a journey map of the existing file-exchange flow to find root causes.
External partners face access friction because SharePoint's default security configurations frequently lock them out.
"it's a little bit harder to get those permissions... they don't necessarily have access to our SharePoint, it's blocked for some reason."
Lacking strict data isolation, external partners accidentally overwrite critical documents, breaking version control.
"If they can't access it then I'll send them a copy of the document and after they make the edits I'll have to go back and update it on my end."
Internal staff waste significant time manually managing email links that external partners frequently lose in their inboxes.
Map out information architecture
I designed a hub-and-spoke architecture with audience targeting over separate partner sites, trading slightly more setup complexity for near-zero ongoing admin, directly solving the provisioning overhead the research exposed.
Prototype and User Testing
I built mid-fidelity wireframes in Figma, then used Claude to make them clickable and walked PCC through the concept to confirm direction.
Validate Against Real-World Workflows
I facilitated 5 moderated usability sessions to surface browser-compatibility issues and access-control gaps, then refined the permission model before handoff.
Final Design
Client Portal Home Screen
One dashboard for PCC staff: partner sites, files distributed, uploads received, and alerts, with push and review in a click.
Problem solved: Staff wasted hours hunting for files and links scattered across inboxes — now everything lives in one view.
What partners see: their space only
A private portal split into From PCC (read-only, no overwrites) and their own Upload folder.
Problem solved: Partners kept overwriting critical shared files, read-only From PCC access prevents accidental edits.
Send files to partners
Drop a batch in the Central Library; a Power Automate flow routes each file to the right partner's read-only From PCC folder and emails them.
Problem solved: Staff manually added users and sent files one by one, automation replaces the repetitive provisioning work.
Every upload, in one inbox
New uploads trigger a Teams card and copy into the Master Inbox, so staff process every submission from one place instead of 20 sites.
Problem solved: Incoming files were lost across email and scattered folders, a single inbox catches every submission.
Partner list directory
Every partner gets its own site with inheritance broken, so none can see another — each listed with its permission group and file counts.
Problem solved: Partners were locked out by SharePoint's default permissions, isolated sites give each one reliable, scoped access.
Reflections & What I Would Do Differently
Establish a Technical Contingency Plan Earlier
Instead of waiting for environment permissions, I would proactively initiate secondary research and platform-independent wireframing to further minimize the impact of technical roadblocks.
Formalize Design-to-Development Handoff
I would integrate engineering-aligned documentation within the design system from the start to more seamlessly bridge the gap between Figma prototypes and the final implementation environment
