Preview the customer portal in Console

Preview how Customer Portals work and experiment with the API by setting up a temporary portal directly from the Seam Console.

You can set up a customer portal directly from the Seam Console. These Console-generated portals are intended as an API exploration playground — they let you preview how portals work and experiment with the API before building your integration.

Important: Portal links created in Console are temporary. They expire after 7 days and should not be used in production. For real-world usage, always generate portals programmatically using the API.

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1. Open the Customer Portals page

From the Console, navigate to Developer → Customer Portals from the top navigation bar.

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2. Select your business verticals

Choose the vertical that best matches your product (for example, Short Term Rental). This setting does two things:

1. Preconfigures recommended defaults for your use case.
2. Updates the labels in the portal UI so they use industry-specific terms your customers expect.

For example:

• In the Hospitality vertical, the generic Seam concept of a Space appears in the portal as a Room.
• In Multi-family, Spaces appear as Units.
• In Gym Management, they appear as Facilities.

Here’s a complete reference of how Seam concepts map to industry-specific labels across verticals:

Vertical	User Identity	Spaces	Bookings
Short Term Rental	Guest	Property listings	Reservations
Multi-family	Tenant	Units, Common areas	Leases
Hospitality	Guest	Rooms, Common areas	Bookings
Gym Management	Member	Facilities	Memberships
Property Tours	Visitor	Tour spaces	Bookings
Neutral	User Identity	Spaces	Bookings

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3. Configure portal features

Under Portal Configuration, select which features to enable:

• Connect – allow customers to connect their device accounts.
• Organize – let customers map devices to rental units, rooms, or spaces.
• Manage Devices – give customers tools to manage devices, troubleshoot, and view logs.
• Configure – allow customers to set automation rules and customize Instant Key branding.

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4. Enter your customer_key

Add the customer_key for the customer this portal belongs to. Seam uses this key to scope the portal to only that customer’s devices and accounts.

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5. (Optional) Set up Spaces

This step is required only if you enable the Organize feature.

• Spaces represent the real-world units your customer manages—for example, Room 101 in a hotel, Unit A in an apartment building, or Studio 3 in a gym.
• Create a Space for each unit your customer manages.
• Use a space_key that matches your own system’s identifier (for example, room-101-id).

Reminder: Even if the portal shows “Rooms” or “Units,” these all map back to Spaces in Seam.

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6. Generate the portal

Click Create Portal. Seam generates a temporary portal URL you can use to preview the portal.

Note: All portal links expire after 7 days. For production, always generate portals programmatically, each time a customer needs access.

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Next step: Generate portals programmatically with the API

In production, portals must be generated with the API so that they can be refreshed whenever a customer needs access. On the next page, we’ll cover how to create portals programmatically using the create_portal endpoint.