Self-Service Portal

The Self-Service Portal gives departing employees a secure link where they can handle their own offboarding tasks - checking off their checklist items, scheduling equipment pickup, reviewing benefits information, requesting a reference letter, opting into the alumni network, and messaging HR directly - without ever needing a PurpletGo account.

This is a Team and Enterprise feature. On the Starter plan the send-link action is unavailable.

How it works

1. PurpletGo sends the link by itself when an offboarding is started with a personal email, or when a personal email is added to it later - see Sending the link automatically. A Super Admin, Admin or HR user can also click Send Portal Link on the offboarding record at any time (a custom role needs Edit offboarding details & status)
2. PurpletGo emails the link to the employee's personal email - see Where the link goes
3. The employee opens the link and enters a one-time code before anything loads - see Confirming it's them. They don't need an account or a password
4. They work through the tasks assigned to them, and everything they submit shows up immediately in the admin view

Sending the link automatically

Settings → General → Send the portal link automatically is on by default. While it is on, the link goes out by itself:

• when an offboarding is started with a personal email, whichever way it was started (the wizard, bulk, CSV import, the API, SCIM, an HRIS sync and the others)
• when a personal email is added to an offboarding, or changed

It goes only to a personal email entered on the offboarding itself (one only on the directory record waits for HR to click Send Portal Link), only on a plan that includes the portal, never to a completed offboarding, and never replaces a link that still works. Each automatic send is in the audit log as Portal Link Sent, marked as automatic. Switch the setting off to send every link by hand.

Where the link goes

The link only ever goes by email, to the personal address on the offboarding, or else the one on the employee's directory record. It is never sent to their work email, to the email of anyone with a PurpletGo account in your organisation, or to an address on one of your organisation's domains: the work mailbox is the one being shut down, and it is often handed to a manager. With no usable personal email, Send Portal Link asks you to add one first.

When SMS is set up - your plan includes it, Twilio is connected under Integrations, and a personal mobile is on file - the employee also gets a text saying the link was emailed and that their code will come by text. The text never contains the link. SMS comes on top of email, never instead of it: if the email can't be sent, nothing is sent and the previous link, if any, keeps working.

Confirming it's them

Before the portal shows anything, the employee clicks Send me a code and enters the 6-digit code. The code goes:

• By text to their personal mobile when SMS is set up as above. If the text can't be sent, it goes to their personal email instead
• By email to their personal email otherwise

So with SMS on, getting in needs both the personal mailbox (for the link) and the phone (for the code).

• A code works for 10 minutes, and a new one can be requested once a minute
• A link can ask for or enter a code at most 10 times an hour in total
• After 10 wrong codes over the link's life, the link locks. The employee is told to ask HR, and the people who can send a new link for that offboarding get an in-app notification. Sending a new link is the way to unlock it

Once confirmed, the browser tab has a session. It ends after 30 minutes without activity or 12 hours after the code was entered, whichever comes first, and always when the link stops working; the employee then enters a new code. Only the employee's own actions count as activity: the chat refreshing in the background and HR's messages being marked read as they appear don't.

What employees see

The portal shows:

• A countdown to their last working day, plus a status timeline (Initiated → Notice Period → IT Offboarding → Asset Return → Complete)
• My Tasks - the checklist items assigned to "employee" / "self" / "you", which they can tick off themselves. Tasks assigned to HR or IT are not listed; the employee sees only an overall progress count for the rest of the checklist
• Equipment Return - schedule a courier pickup by picking a date (the next 14 working days) and a morning or afternoon slot, plus a pickup address and optional notes for the courier
• Benefits & COBRA - a summary of health coverage end date, the 60-day COBRA election window, and other standard exit benefits info, with a yes/no acknowledgment of COBRA intent
• Reference Letter Request - request a general, technical, character, or "both general & technical" reference; HR gets notified by email and the employee can submit more than one request
• Alumni Network - opt in with an optional LinkedIn URL; this also gets highlighted once the offboarding is marked complete
• Message HR - a simple two-way chat thread with the HR team, polled every 20 seconds
• Documents - any compliance or e-signature documents tied to the offboarding, with their current status. The employee can download the ones shared with them: by default a document is shared once it is signed, and HR can share or stop sharing any document from the edit dialog on the offboarding record. A download uses a link that works for 10 minutes and is written to the audit log. Nothing can be signed in the portal: signatures go through e-signature or are recorded by HR

Resending the portal link

If an employee loses their link, or their access needs to be reset:

1. Open the offboarding record
2. Click Send Portal Link again

Sending again replaces the previous link - the old one stops working immediately, and so does any session opened with it. To stop the link without sending a new one, click Revoke.

Portal security

• Each link holds a random 256-bit token, not a JWT. PurpletGo stores only its SHA-256 hash, and every request is checked against it in the database before anything loads
• An offboarding has one live link at a time. It works for 7 days (not currently configurable) and can be opened as often as needed until then
• A link stops working when HR sends a new one or revokes it, when the offboarding is completed or deleted, when the employee's work email, personal email or personal mobile is changed, when their data is erased, and when your plan no longer includes the portal
• Every change the employee makes in the portal (checklist completions, pickup scheduling, benefits ack, reference requests, alumni opt-in, messages, marking HR's messages read, and document downloads) is written to the audit log with the IP address and browser it came from, so admins can see exactly what was done, when, and from where. Asking for and entering codes, and opening the link, are audited too
• Mutating requests from the portal are rate-limited per link (60 requests/minute, 20/minute for chat messages) to prevent abuse if a link were ever leaked