PF PIER FOUNDATIONS PF Platform

Partner Brief

How the portal works, where your data lives, and what going live looks like.

The PF Platform runs on Cloudflare, served from a global network so it loads fast from anywhere and stays up. The pages are standard web pages with small on-demand functions behind them (login, data, uploads, schedule, daily reports). A security gate checks every visitor before any page loads, and each person's role controls what they can see. The interactive tools, Design Studio and HR, sit inside the portal behind that one login.

174
Bids in this morning's refresh
22
Projects
160
Business-development records

Prepared for Brad Reinking, Derek Franke, and Jonathan Reinking. Reviewed by Peter, AI COO, Pier Foundations, for accuracy.

The Centerpiece

The data flow

Two clear paths run through the platform. Your SharePoint workbooks stay the source of truth. The portal is a fast read-copy that is rebuilt from them every night, plus one live path for daily field reports.

Source of truth (you maintain) Live now Portal database Coming / follow-on (not live yet)
SOURCE OF TRUTH SharePoint / Microsoft 365 Master workbooks you maintain • Bid Log • Project Master • BD Master • Budget / Estimate template • Insurance Nightly refresh Rebuilds the portal's read-copy 174 bids · 22 projects · 160 BD LIVE NOW The Portal On Cloudflare, behind the security gate Partners view bids, projects, BD Field crew submit daily reports Design Studio & HR behind one login Daily field reports Crew hours, production, weather, safety, equipment, plus file attachments submitted from the portal PORTAL DATABASE Report captured on submit Approval flow: Submitted → Approved → Sent to HR Each submission recorded, not overwritten SharePoint QAQC folders Attached files stream here from each daily report file attachments COMING / FOLLOW-ON Scheduled write-back Daily roll-up appends field reports into an Excel master Portal stage changes write to the master not live yet

Solid blue and green lines are running today. Dashed amber lines are the follow-on build and are not live yet.

Read it in one line: your workbooks feed the portal every night, the portal shows the read-copy, and daily field reports flow the other way into the portal database (with files to SharePoint QAQC). The write-back of portal changes into the workbooks is the part still to come.

Where It Lives

Where your data lives, and how it is backed up

Two layers, by design. Nothing changes about how the team keeps its master files.

LayerWhat it is
Source of truth The SharePoint / Microsoft 365 Excel masters the team already maintains (Bid Log, Project Master, BD Master, the Budget and Estimate template, Insurance). Nothing changes about how you keep them.
What the portal shows A set of generated data files rebuilt every night from those workbooks. This morning's refresh carried 174 bids, 22 projects, and 160 business-development records.

Backups

Microsoft 365

Version-history plus automatic backup of the master workbooks. Every change is versioned and recoverable.

Login database

Dumped to a weekly backup, so the per-user accounts and roles can be restored.

The whole platform

Every page and data file lives in version control, recoverable to any prior point.

Important habit: data edits belong in the SharePoint master files, not typed into the portal. The nightly refresh rebuilds the portal's copy from the masters, so a value typed only into the portal would be replaced at the next refresh.

Straight Answer

What happens if the portal or Peter goes down

Your data is never trapped inside the portal or Peter. This is the point worth being clearest about.

The masters are yours, always

The master files live in your own SharePoint / Microsoft 365, which Microsoft keeps durable, versioned, and always available. You can open them directly, any time, with no dependence on the portal or on Peter.

The portal is a layer on top

The portal is a fast, friendly layer over that data. If it is ever down, the data is still right there in SharePoint, unchanged. And because everything is version-controlled, the platform is recoverable to any prior point.

Bottom line for Derek: if the portal disappeared tomorrow, you would still open your bids, projects, and BD records straight from SharePoint. The portal makes the data easier to use. It does not hold the data hostage.

Working Together

When many people use it at once

Nothing gets lost when several people are working at the same time. Two mechanisms handle it.

Edits to the masters

Edits belong in the master workbooks, the single source of truth, and Microsoft 365 versions every change, so nothing is lost. The nightly refresh then rebuilds the portal's copy from those masters.

Daily-report capture

For daily reports, the portal database records each submission with its own approval state. Concurrent submissions are each captured and queued, not overwritten. Every report is accounted for.

Honest Scope

Live now vs coming

What is running today, and what is a follow-on build that is not live yet. We label this plainly on purpose.

Live now
  • Per-user login and role-based access
  • The security gate on every visitor
  • The nightly data feeds from the masters
  • The backups (M365, login database, version control)
  • Daily-report capture with the approval flow
  • File upload from daily reports to SharePoint
  • The Design Studio, live inside the portal behind the one login
  • The HR tool, live inside the portal behind the one login
Coming, follow-on
  • An Excel roll-up of daily reports into a master
  • Portal stage-changes writing back to the master
  • The CRM the product team is building, expected soon

To be explicit: today, a stage typed in the portal does not yet reach the workbook. That write-back is the follow-on build, not something running now.

Going Live

The URL, and the GoDaddy question

Point a subdomain of the company's own domain, such as portal.pierfoundations.com, at the portal with a quick DNS change. Keep the hosting on Cloudflare. Use GoDaddy only as a registrar if you like, not as the host.

The recommendation

A company subdomain gives you a polished, professional address while the strong foundation stays underneath. It is a DNS change, not a move of the application.

Why not host on GoDaddy

A domain (the URL) and hosting (where the app runs) are two different things. GoDaddy is fine for holding a domain, but its web hosting cannot run the login functions, the per-user database, or the security gate. Moving hosting there would mean rebuilding the backend for no gain, and losing the instant rollback and zero-downtime updates.

portal.pierfoundations.com Your company subdomain DNS change Cloudflare Hosting stays here The Portal Login, data, security gate, tools GoDaddy can hold the domain as registrar. It does not host the app.

Going Live

Status

Done and live

  • Individual per-user login and role-based access, built and running
  • Brad, Jonathan, Melanie, and Derek already on their own logins and using the platform
  • Security gate, data feeds, and backups all operating

One step remaining

  • The three field crew still need their first login (one-time temp password, then set their own)
  • After all four are in, switch off the shared password
  • Remove two temporary test accounts
The remaining step is onboarding, not engineering. The login system is finished. Nothing blocks going live and iterating today.

Once Live

How updates ship

Updates publish through a single controlled step that publishes the new version, verifies the security gate held, and records the change.

Instant rollback

Every prior version is retained, so any update rolls back in seconds if it ever misbehaves.

No downtime

Updates go out all at once with no outage. The portal stays available throughout.

Safe while in use

Editing while people are logged in is fine. Their sessions carry through the update.

For The Partners

Two decisions

1

Pick the professional URL

A company subdomain, such as portal.pierfoundations.com, is the clean choice. It is a DNS change with hosting staying on Cloudflare.

2

Give the go to onboard the field crew

Once all four have their own logins, the shared password can be retired and the two temporary test accounts removed.

Open item to track: the Field Operations tool is most likely to become its own separate portal, scoped apart from the PF Platform rather than built inside it. It currently sits with True Bearing and Peter and needs following up, True Bearing has not yet been responsive. Tracked separately from the two decisions above.