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Hi everyone and welcome to this SwiftFox Masterclass. Today you're going to look at one of the more powerful additions to SwiftFox websites – the Project Block. It's a way to bring your SwiftFox project tables directly onto your website, so portal users can see, search and update the records that are relevant to them without ever leaving the page.

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This session isn't about every styling option or checkbox in the configuration panel. Instead, you'll focus on what the project block is for, how it works in practice, and how to set it up for a clean, focused portal experience. At its core, the project block is a live window into a SwiftFox project table displayed on a page in your portal.

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When someone updates a value in the portal, that change flows straight back into Swift Fox in real time. Your project table remains the source of truth, and the portal becomes a focused, role aware view of it.

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This is particularly useful for workflows where people outside your organisation or staff working in the field need to see and update a subset of project information without being given access to your full CRM.

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Membership records, contract reporting, case progression, volunteer assignments – anything that lives in a project table can now have a controlled, branded front door in your portal.

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The project block is added to a page like any other block. Once it's on a page, you'll see a settings panel where you select which project folder and project table the block should call from. Rather than asking you to paste in an ID, you'll give it a searchable list of every project table you have in SwiftFox.

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You simply find the one you want and select it. From there, two decisions shape the rest of the setup. The first is the identifier column. This is the column SwiftFox uses to decide which rows a logged in user should see. In most cases, this will be an owner or assign field – a column that links a row to a specific person.

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When someone logs into the portal. SwiftFox checks this column against their record and only displays the rows where they match. So if Jake logs in and four rows in the project table are assigned to Jake, those four rows are the only rows Jake will see.

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The second is the column selection. Once the table is chosen, every column becomes available to display. You pick which columns appear in the portal view, and SwiftFox shows the column type, checkbox, date, status, text, and so on. So it's clear what you're displaying.

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A good rule of thumb when setting up a project block is to only show columns that support a decision or an action. If a column doesn't help the user understand the record or change something about it, then it probably doesn't need to be in the portal view.

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For each column you include, you can decide whether it should be editable or read only. This is where the project block earns its keep. You might let a project manager mark a task is complete, or update a status while keeping the underlying contract value or the assigned owner locked.

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You can also enable search on the block. Search applies to text based columns, so if your project table includes names, references, or descriptions, users can quickly narrow down to the row they're looking for. If your table is short or doesn't have a useful text column to search on, you can simply leave the search disabled.

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If your workflow includes file uploads or other submissions, the block supports a submit action to add files or trigger an update against the road being viewed. Because the project block uses your standard block styling controls like your padding, borders, background colour, and container width, you can make it feel native to your website if needed. Add a short heading or sentence above it to set context.

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It's worth stepping back and thinking about where this kind of block fits into a broader portal strategy. A SwiftFox powered portal with project blocks placed in the right pages can replace a surprising amount of manual administration, chasing updates, sending status reports, exporting spreadsheets because the people closest to the work can now see and maintain their own records directly.

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And while project tables are the obvious starting point, the underlying pattern is the same one you'll see across SwiftFox. Surface the right data to the right person. Give them the controls they need, and let everything stay in sync automatically. So to wrap things up, the project block is about taking the data that already lives in your SwiftFox project tables and giving the right people a clean, controlled way to work with it from your portal.

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If you're just getting started, keep it simple. Pick one project table. Choose the column that controls who sees what, and select only the columns and genuinely help your members do their work. Build out from there as you see how your team and your portal users actively engage with it.

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Thank you for joining us and we'll see you in the next masterclass.