Using AI With Your Partner Portal

PartnerPortal has a built-in MCP server — a secure way to connect an AI assistant to your portal. Once you connect an assistant like Claude, you can ask about your partner program in plain language and have the assistant answer using your live portal data, acting as you and respecting your permissions.

This page explains what the AI can see, the questions you can ask, the actions it can take, and how access stays safe. To set it up, see Connect Claude to Your Portal.

What is the MCP server?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI assistants connect to outside tools and data. PartnerPortal runs an MCP server for your portal, so a supported assistant can read your program data and take a small number of actions on your behalf — the same things you could do yourself in the portal, no more.

You connect an assistant once, by pasting a connect URL and signing in with your normal portal login. There is no separate password, API key, or developer setup — see Connect Claude to Your Portal.

What you can ask

Once connected, your assistant can answer questions across your whole program. For example:

Your program at a glance — “Give me an overview of my portal.” A single orientation call returns your program setup, key settings, connected integrations, and counts.
Partners — “Which partners joined this quarter?”, “Show me Acme Consulting’s details, members, and recent leads.”
Leads — “How many leads are pending?”, “Show me the leads from Acme in the last 30 days,” “What’s the full history on this lead?”
Opportunities — “Which opportunities are still active, and who’s engaged?”
Commissions and revenue — “What do we owe partners right now?”, “Show revenue attributed to partners last month,” “Give me a health check of the program.”
Enablement content — “What resources do we have on onboarding?”, “What was our latest announcement?”, “Which lessons are in the Partner Onboarding course?”
Authoring content — “Draft an announcement about the new pricing guide,” “Create a three-lesson onboarding course from these notes,” “Add this PDF as an attachment on the welcome resource.”

The assistant returns compact, readable answers and can chain questions together — for example, find a partner, then list that partner’s leads, or upload an image, then use it as a resource’s featured image.

The tools available

Behind those questions is a fixed set of tools — the specific, permission-checked actions the MCP server exposes. Your assistant decides which to call based on what you ask. There are 31 in total: 16 that read your data and 15 that make changes.

Reading your data

Tool	What it answers
`describe_portal`	A one-call overview of your portal — program setup, key settings, connected integrations, and entity counts. The best first call in a session.
`list_partners`	Your partner organizations, with filtering, search, and sorting (including by lifetime revenue).
`get_partner`	Everything about one partner — members, recent leads, commission terms, tier, and open payouts.
`list_leads`	Your leads, filtered by status, partner, date range, or search text.
`get_lead`	Full detail on one lead, including its comment thread and CRM sync state.
`list_opportunities`	Opportunities shared with partners, and where each partner stands.
`list_commissions_owed`	What you owe partners right now — and paid history when you ask for it.
`list_revenue`	Revenue transactions attributed to partners.
`get_metrics_summary`	A one-call health check of the program — partner and lead counts, recent revenue, and open payouts.
`list_resources`	Your enablement content library.
`get_resource`	The full contents of one resource.
`list_announcements`	Announcements you’ve sent to partners.
`get_announcement`	The full text of one announcement.
`list_courses`	Your courses, with lesson counts.
`get_course`	One course with its lessons in order.
`get_quiz`	A quiz lesson’s questions, answer key, pass mark and attempt limit. Portal team only.

Making changes

Tool	What it does
`create_lead`	Registers a lead against one of your partners — recorded exactly like a portal registration, with that partner’s commission terms applied automatically.
`add_lead_comment`	Adds a comment to a lead’s discussion thread, attributed to you.
`upload_asset_from_url`	Fetches a file from a public web address and stores it in your portal, as a public image or a private attachment, ready to use in content.
`create_announcement`	Creates an announcement — as a draft unless you explicitly ask to publish. Emails go out only if you also ask for notifications.
`update_announcement`	Edits an announcement, including publishing a draft when you ask for it.
`delete_announcement`	Permanently deletes an announcement. Cannot be undone.
`create_resource`	Creates a resource in your content library, or a lesson when one of its categories is a course, with a body, featured image and attachments.
`update_resource`	Edits a resource or lesson.
`delete_resource`	Permanently deletes a resource or lesson, with its files and any quiz history. Cannot be undone.
`create_quiz_lesson`	Creates a quiz lesson in a course from the questions you give it, with the pass mark and attempt limit you choose.
`update_quiz`	Changes a quiz lesson’s questions, pass mark or attempt limit. Partners’ past attempts are not changed.
`create_category`	Creates a content category or a course, shared with the partner groups or partners you name.
`update_category`	Edits a category or course, including who can see it.
`delete_category`	Permanently deletes a category or course; its resources are kept. Cannot be undone.
`set_lesson_order`	Puts a course’s lessons in the order you want.

About the write actions

Everything the assistant can change falls into two groups, and both are performed as you with your own permissions.

Leads. A lead you register through the assistant is recorded exactly like one you register in the portal, with the partner’s commission terms applied automatically, and a comment is attributed to your account.

Content. The assistant can build out your announcements, resource library and courses the way you would in the editor: write the body (it uses the same HTML the editor produces, cleaned by the server on save), upload images and attachments from web addresses, group lessons into courses and order them, and choose which partner groups or partners can see a category. Each uploaded featured image or attachment belongs to one item, as in the editor: the assistant is refused if it tries to reuse one on a second item, and it uploads the file again instead. Two safeguards are built in:

Announcements start as drafts. Publishing makes an announcement live and cannot be undone, so the assistant has to ask for it explicitly, and a good assistant will confirm with you first. Emailing partners is a separate, opt-in choice, as in the portal’s editor. You can always review a draft in the portal before it goes out.
New categories and courses are invisible until shared. If no partner group or partner is assigned, no partner sees the content, and the assistant is told so in the result.
Deletes are final. Nothing the assistant deletes can be restored, and deleting a resource takes its files and any quiz history with it. The delete tools say so in their own descriptions and ask the assistant to confirm with you first, and the result lists what went. A category cannot be deleted while a resource in it has nowhere else to live.

Quizzes. The assistant can write quiz lessons for a course: the questions, which choices are correct, the pass mark and the attempt limit, saved in one step and checked before anything is created. It can read a quiz back, answer key included, and change it later; partners’ past attempts keep what they were shown. These tools are only offered to your portal team, never to a partner login.

How access stays safe

The AI connection is designed so it can never do more than the person using it:

It acts as you. When you connect, you sign in with your own portal login. The assistant sees only what your account is allowed to see, and every action is recorded under your name.
It’s scoped to your portal. A connection is tied to one portal. It can never reach another company’s data.
Sensitive details stay hidden. Partner payout and bank details are never exposed to the assistant.
A fixed set of writes. The assistant can register and comment on leads and author content; it cannot change partners, settings, payouts or billing.
Team members only, for now. AI access is currently available to your internal team (admins and staff). Your partners cannot connect an assistant to your portal yet.

Which assistants are supported

Claude — on the web at claude.ai, in the Claude desktop app, and in Claude Code (the terminal). See Connect Claude to Your Portal.
ChatGPT — planned. This page will be updated when it’s available.

Availability

AI features are included on every plan, at no extra cost. Anyone on your team with permission to manage portal settings can get the connect URL and connect their own assistant.

Frequently asked questions

Does PartnerPortal have an MCP server?

Yes. Every portal has its own MCP server, so you can connect an AI assistant like Claude and work with your partner data in natural language.

Which AI assistants can I connect?

Claude today — on the web, in the desktop app, and in the Claude Code terminal. ChatGPT support is planned.

Can the AI change my data?

In a fixed set of ways, all acting as you: it can register and comment on leads, and it can create and edit announcements, resources, categories and courses, including uploading images and attachments for them. Announcements it creates stay drafts until you ask to publish. Everything else is read-only.

What can the assistant see?

Only what your own account can see in your portal, and only for your portal. Partner payout and bank details are never exposed.

Can my partners use this?

Not yet. AI access is currently for your internal team (admins and staff). Partner access is planned for a later release.

Does it cost extra?

No. AI features are included on every plan.