The board is not the portal

A job board is built for the people doing the work. It has internal notes, costs, half-finished tasks, and columns nobody meant to explain. A client portal is built for four questions: where we are, what is next, when, and whether they need to act.

Guest access on the source tool shows a view of that board. If a column is visible, it is visible. Orbit Signal never queries the raw source from a customer route. The portal reads a published snapshot. Column names that look like notes, cost, price, margin, budget, fee, or salary cannot be mapped onto a customer field.

Progress percent appears only when every milestone has a weight, and only completed weight counts. An in-progress milestone adds nothing. A blank date stays “Not yet confirmed.” Free text stays a tentative phrase. The product does not invent a day.

Milestone names stay in the language of the source. The chrome around them can be English, German, or Latvian.