TargetX Portal Overview
The TargetX Portal is a dynamic, mobile-first, and personalized digital interface designed to engage constituents at every stage of their journey—including prospective students, applicants, current students, parents, and counselors. Built on the Salesforce platform, it enables institutions to deliver tailored content and experiences without requiring design or development expertise.
Key Features
- Mobile-first experience – Fully optimized for smartphones, tablets, and desktops, it ensures seamless engagement anytime, anywhere.
- Drag-and-drop Portal Builder – Effortlessly create branded portals with images, embedded videos, and customizable widgets that display application statuses, requirement checklists, or event information – all without coding.
- Multi-page functionality – Build segmented, journey-based navigation that serves different user groups or stages within the enrollment lifecycle.
- Personalized content – Use merge fields to dynamically tailor greetings, names, and status updates based on each user’s Salesforce Contact record.
Benefits
The TargetX Portal streamlines engagement and strengthens relationships by offering:
- A responsive, no-code builder for flexibility and ease of use.
- Strategic personalization to deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time.
- Seamless Salesforce integration, maintaining continuity between CRM data and user touchpoints.
Best Practices for Managing your TargetX Portal
The TargetX Portal enables institutions to deliver dynamic, mobile-first, personalized experiences while maintaining control and consistency. Here’s a refined shortlist of best practices to streamline portal creation, maintenance, and performance.
Efficient Loading with Lazy Loading
- Use lazy loading - load only three portal sections at a time. This improves performance under heavy traffic, prevents timeouts, and ensures faster initial page loads.
- Avoid changing the default unless necessary; loading fewer or more sections may negatively impact page rendering and user experience.
Organized Portal Creation
- Define a clear naming convention when creating or cloning portals. This aids maintenance and traceability.
- Use Merge Fields thoughtfully—they personalize content but are case-sensitive. For example, use
{{ Id }}rather than{{ ID }}to avoid rendering issues.
Strong Visuals and Branding
Optimize your portal banner:
- Upload images via Salesforce Files to ensure proper formatting and availability. Be mindful of file size and overall storage limits.
- Always include Alt Text for accessibility.
- Limit your banner's title to 45 characters and subtitle to 32, using recognizable color names or hex values for styling.
Stick to recommended dimensions for images and graphics to maintain visual consistency.
Modular Layout and Section Management
- When building your portal, define sections with layouts like one column, two columns, or ¾ left/right. Each section can be moved, duplicated, or deleted to refine the page layout.
- Add Conditions to sections when necessary to control visibility based on user context or attributes.
Utilizing Widgets Creatively
Add widgets via the Portal Builder interface. After placement, each widget—text, video, images, recommendations, and supplemental forms—can be tailored in the Content tab.
For Image widgets, use the "Fit to Block" option to ensure correct display. Style the background and understand file constraints to maintain page responsiveness.
Working with Communities and Salesforce Integration
- Follow best practices when configuring communities for the portal:
- Enable Digital Experiences (under Setup → Experiences → Settings) and establish an appropriately named domain.
- Disable Lightning Features for Guest Users to enhance security.
- Restrict access to standard Salesforce pages within the portal for external users.
- Create one central Community Profile when managing multiple portal experiences to avoid duplicate contact records.
Error Prevention
- Leverage the TargetX Permission Scanner to audit and assign correct permissions automatically.