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Preview as a role

Preview lets you experience the app the way an end user would, without sending an invite.
  1. Open Preview in the builder sidebar.
  2. If the app has a landing, use the surface switch to pick Portal, Project landing, or App landing.
  3. For Portal, use Preview as to pick a role (and project when you have more than one).
  4. Choose which blueprint to serve:
    • Published (default): the same version real customers see in production.
    • Draft: your live unpublished blueprint. On a landing, this is the unpublished design, plus the languages and public brand colors you just saved. Visitors on the landing domain still see the last published look and colors.
  5. Click through pages, forms, chat, and Search (Command-K) as that audience. Search uses the previewed role. On a landing, open posts the same way a guest would. Host search does not belong on a guest landing. Long pages on a phone scroll by swiping, the same way they do on a computer. You do not need to force a component to the height of the screen for Preview or the portal to move.
A tool or page that works for you as a builder can still fail for a customer role until Roles, page access, and model access match. After permission changes, re-test with Preview as, not only as owner or admin. When you Preview as a person, throwaway scripts in Chat follow that person’s data access: they see the rows that person is allowed to see, and they cannot use builder-grade actions such as inviting users, rewriting app files, using the app’s connected accounts, minting public intake links, or publishing live events. Tools you already granted to the role still run with the tool’s own access. Draft Preview does not publish anything. Real portal users always get the Published blueprint. Guests on a Project landing or App landing domain also stay on the last published design until you publish. When you are ready for customers to see draft work, publish from the sidebar Publish page. Landing Preview hides Preview as and Reset. Guests are not a role, and there is no preview-user session to wipe. HIPAA-enabled apps do not show landing surfaces. Switching Published / Draft remints the preview session. Open chats realign to the new blueprint on the next message (including background follow-ups). Use Reset when you want a clean preview user with no prior chats or data. Set App Settings → Appearance → Portal chrome to the shell customers should see (drawer or Tabs (brand header + bottom tabs)). Preview as uses that same chrome. The Preview toolbar is builder-only; the end-user portal never shows Exit preview. For the full invite and registration flow, see Inviting and managing end users. To see the portal as a specific customer (real data, real actions), see Impersonate an end user.