Guide
Onboarding a partner agency onto a matter in ninety seconds
Updated 2026-09-10 · 3 min read
Onboarding a partner should be an email on the matter, not a procurement cycle. The design is: type the address, they claim, they land in Joint Ops on that matter only, with MFA, and their department gets a free partner workspace. Ninety seconds is the interactive target, not a contracted SLA.
Why CC lines fail
A detective on a thread can see too much or too little, and neither state is auditable. Shared inboxes do not MFA. When the agent changes, the thread does not. Multi-agency work needs a participant record on the matter: role, access level, and a workspace that belongs to their agency so they are not borrowing a prosecutor login. That is the difference between a CC and an invite.
What the invite creates
The lead office sends the invite from the matter. Claim creates (or reuses) a partner_free workspace: up to five seats, work on invited matters, no matters of their own, no AI agents of their own. They get Joint Ops on that file and evidence they are allowed to see. Sealed items and prosecutors-only notes stay with the lead office. Observer seats on the lead tenant remain $0 under fair use. Upgrading — more contributor seats, intake referrals, the agency's own matters — is quoted, not a credit card.
What to tell IT
This is still tenant isolation. The partner is not in the lead office's org. Cross-tenant reads without the invite are incidents. MFA is required at claim. The sponsor office can see who was invited, who claimed, and which matters are shared. There is no public demo login for this path; offices walk it on synthetic data through the contact form.
Related work
Once the partner is on the file, their uploads should hit the disclosure radar and their close-outs should be chaseable from the Monday docket brief. Read the multi-agency software guide for ACLs, the cure-path guide for what a declined referral looks like on their desk, and the Trust Center for how isolation is enforced (forged organization ids ignored, 404 instead of 403 on some cross-tenant fetches).
Seat math, honestly
The free partner workspace is five seats. Fair-use observers on the lead office are $0 up to a published cap in the price book (at most two times core seats). Above that, quote contributor seats. Do not tell a police department they have unlimited free logins. Do not put them on a prosecutor username. The product's partner_free plan is the documented ceiling: five seats, invited matters only, no AI agents of their own. Partner Pack is the upgrade conversation, quoted, through the contact form.
Failure modes
If claim is not completed, the shadow org should not sit forever — unclaimed workspaces are swept on a published idle window. If the detective's email domain is wrong, they should not land in the lead office. If they need a matter that was never invited, they should see nothing, not a 403 that confirms the matter number. That 404-not-403 choice is isolation, not a UI quirk. Write the invite from the matter you mean. Do not invite the whole department to every file. Precise access is the product; a wide invite recreates the CC line you were trying to leave. After claim, check the partner workspace seat count. Five is the cap on the free plan. A sixth person is an upgrade conversation, not a silent extra login. Keep MFA on. A partner workspace without a second factor is a shared inbox with a nicer coat of paint, and the claim flow is built to enroll TOTP before the detective sees the matter.