Set up a private beta board

How to get there: Click Users in the sidebar → User Groups → New Group. Then Settings → Boards → New Board, set Visibility to User Groups, and select your beta group.

Sometimes you want feedback from a small, specific group without exposing early plans to your whole userbase. A private beta board is the pattern for that.

Typical uses:

  • Product betas. Invite 20 to 50 customers to try a new feature and collect their feedback in one place.
  • Customer advisory board. Give your top-tier customers a dedicated space to shape the roadmap.
  • Internal team. Let colleagues (support, sales, engineering) submit and vote on internal-facing improvements.

Step 1. Create the User Group

  1. Go to Users and open the User Groups tab.
  2. Click New Group. Name it something like "Beta Testers" or "Advisory Board".
  3. Add users manually, or add them later after they sign up.

Step 2. Invite the group members

If the users don't exist in your portal yet:

  1. Go to Users and click Invite.
  2. Paste their email addresses. Optionally click a chip to add a name.
  3. Send the invites. New accounts land in your Users list.
  4. Return to your User Group and add them.

If you don't want to email anyone (you're prepping accounts to vote on their behalf), use Add silently instead.

Step 3. Create the private board

  1. Go to Settings → Boards and click New Board.
  2. Give it a name, e.g. "Beta feedback" or "Advisory Board".
  3. Set Visibility to User Groups.
  4. Select the group you created in Step 1.
  5. Save.

The board now only appears to admins and members of that group. Everyone else on the portal, including your other customers, cannot see it.

Step 4. Point the group at the board

Share the direct board URL with the group (from your welcome message, kickoff email, or Slack channel). When they log in, the board appears in their sidebar alongside any public boards you have.

Tips

  • Multiple groups per board. A single board can be visible to more than one group. Great for a "VIP + Enterprise" board.
  • Group changes are live. Add or remove users from the group and the board's visibility updates immediately, no republish needed.
  • Combine with tags and Segments. Use User Segments to auto-populate a group by email domain or MRR band. Members added by a segment inherit board visibility just like manually-added ones.
  • Admins always see everything. Group-restricted boards are only hidden from non-admin users. Your team keeps full visibility for moderation.

When not to use this

If you want to give internal folks read-only access to the whole portal, this pattern isn't quite right. There's no read-only admin tier in ProductLift; the closest workaround is inviting them as customers (members) so they see all public boards but not internal comments. A private board keeps a small group focused; it does not gate the rest of the portal.

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