Clients sign in to their Client Portal using a phone-first login flow. This replaced the old name-and-birthdate lookup, which was a common source of login failures.
Phone number. The client enters their phone number on the portal login page. No name fields are required.
One-time code. If the phone number matches a client record at the center, CoolFocus sends a one-time verification code by text message (SMS) and takes the client to a verification page.
Date of birth. On the verification page, the client enters the code they received along with their date of birth. This confirms identity when a phone number is shared by more than one client (for example, a household phone).
Login. Once the code and date of birth match a client record tied to that phone number, the client is signed in and taken to their account (or wherever they were headed, such as a form or booking link).
The previous flow matched clients by first name, last name, and birthdate, then sent an SMS code. That approach failed in a few common situations:
Misspelled or mismatched names. A small difference between what the client types and what is on file caused the lookup to fail.
Shared phone numbers. When two client records shared the same phone number, neither client could log in.
Recycled phone numbers. A phone number reassigned from one client to another no longer reliably proved identity on its own.
Keying the first step off the phone number (something the client has) instead of their name (something they have to spell correctly) reduces these failures. Date of birth is still required as a second identity check on the verification step, which also resolves the shared-phone-number case.
Once signed in, clients can view media in two places:
Secure messages. If a staff member sends a secure message that includes a photo or video (for example, an image or a short video clip), the client sees it inline in the message thread. Photos appear as a linked thumbnail, and videos appear with playback controls so the client can watch them directly in the portal without downloading a separate file.
Visit files. Files attached to a client's visit, such as an ultrasound video, are grouped into their own Videos section alongside any Images and Documents on that visit, and videos play directly in the browser with standard playback controls.
If a file's secure link has not finished generating, or the file could not be prepared for viewing, it will not be shown to the client rather than displaying a broken thumbnail or player.
Administrators can set a welcome message that clients see on the portal homepage after they log in.
Go to Settings > Client Portal > General and edit the Welcome Message field.
The field uses a rich text editor, so you can format the message with bold, italics, links, and similar text formatting instead of plain text only.
The message can be up to 2,000 characters. Saving a longer message shows a validation error asking you to shorten it.
If your organization had a plain-text welcome message saved before this change, it still displays correctly, including any line breaks, and can now be edited and formatted with the rich text editor.
Administrators can also upload a Portal Logo shown in the Client Portal header, separate from the organization logo used elsewhere in CoolFocus. If no Portal Logo is set, the Client Portal shows the organization logo instead. The General tab's Portal Title field is the client-visible name shown in the browser tab and header, which can differ from your CoolFocus organization name, for example a clinic or DBA name. See Client Portal Logo for details.
If the code or date of birth don't match, the client sees a message like:
"We were not able to sign you in with the information provided. Please contact your center for assistance."
If a client reports this, check that:
The phone number on file is correct. The number the client enters must match a phone number on their client record at that center. If a client's phone number has changed, or a client's old number was reassigned to someone else, update the client record with the correct phone number.
The date of birth on file is correct. If the client enters a code correctly but the date of birth doesn't match any client record tied to that phone number, they will not be able to complete login.
They are using the most recent code sent to them. Codes expire after a short time, and requesting a new one invalidates older codes.
No name matching is used. Clients are no longer asked for their name during login, so name misspellings can no longer cause a login failure.
Staff can look up and correct a client's phone number or date of birth from their client record. See Client Records and History.
If a client still cannot log in after confirming the phone number and date of birth on their record, contact support.
