O Order of Architects needed a new portal. The existing one had been running since 2014, and by the time the project started, it was showing its age in more ways than one. The technology was outdated, the structure no longer reflected how the Order was organised, and the platform could not support the shift toward digitally delivered services that Portuguese public administration was pushing for.
Caixa Mágica built the replacement. The result is a portal that serves thousands of architects across Portugal, handling everything from professional certificate requests to document signing with legal validity.
Order of Architects Portal: The Challenge
The Order of Architects Portal had been live for over a decade when the OA decided to act. Decade-old systems rarely age well in software, and this one had accumulated the usual problems: a technology stack that was increasingly difficult to maintain, a structure that no longer matched the organisation behind it, and a user experience that reflected the assumptions of 2014 rather than the expectations of the present.
Furthermore, the regional restructuring of the Order made things more complex. The portal needed to recognise which regional section an architect belonged to and adapt accordingly. That kind of contextual personalisation was not something the old system could handle.
There was also a regulatory dimension. The Agency for Administrative Modernization (AMA) had published recommendations for how public administration services should be delivered digitally. The OA was committed to meeting them. That meant the new portal could not simply be a visual refresh of the old one. It needed to function as a proper digital services gateway, with dematerialised processes, interoperability with national systems, and compliance with AMA’s Single Desk requirements.
Building on top of the old system was not an option. The scope required starting fresh.
Building the Order of Architects Portal
Designing for the people who use it most
The design brief centred on OA members: architects, trainees, and candidates. These are the people who log in regularly, submit requests, download certificates, and manage their professional standing through the portal. If the portal did not work well for them, nothing else would matter.
A front office built around clarity and task completion was the outcome. Navigation follows a consistent logic and pages are responsive and accessible. Visual hierarchy is deliberate: users can find what they need without understanding how the system is organised behind the scenes. Onboarding introduces new users through a structured flow rather than dropping them into a dashboard.
A back office built for the people running it
The Order of Architects Portal is not just a member-facing product. Behind the front office sits a back office used by three distinct groups: the OA Administrator, the National Governing Council (CDN), and the OA Secretariat.
Each group has its own area, its own permissions, and its own workflows. The administrator area handles configuration and user management. The CDN covers governance-level functions. Day-to-day processing of member requests falls to the Secretariat.
Authentication controls access throughout. Users see what they are supposed to see, and nothing beyond that. The back office was designed to be manageable by staff without specialist technical knowledge, which matters for an organisation the size of the OA.
Integration with national systems
One of the more technically demanding aspects of the Order of Architects Portal was its interoperability requirements. The portal does not operate in isolation. It connects to several external systems that are central to how architects work in Portugal.
The most significant integration is with SCAP, the Professional Attributes Certification System. SCAP allows architects to sign documents with their professional credentials formally recognised. For a profession where signed approvals carry legal and regulatory weight, this is not a convenience feature. It is a core requirement.
Beyond SCAP, the portal connects to the AMA authentication provider, the OA’s membership management system, and its document management infrastructure. A Single Sign-On solution ties these together, so architects authenticate once and move between OA services without logging in again.
QR code validation is built in at both ends. Professional certificates issued through the portal include a QR code. That code can be validated by third parties through the portal itself, confirming the certificate’s authenticity without contacting the OA directly.
A set of scheduled tasks runs in the background, handling processes that need to happen automatically on a regular basis. These are invisible to members but essential to keeping the system current and reliable.
Public access
Not everything in the portal requires authentication. The public-facing layer is designed for visitors who are not OA members: people looking up information about the Order, checking on services, or beginning the process of joining. This area follows the same accessibility and usability principles as the rest of the portal, with responsiveness across devices and a clear, navigable structure.
Order of Architects Portal: Key Areas
The portal is divided into four functional areas, each serving a distinct audience.
Acesso Público handles interaction with visitors and unregistered users. It is the entry point for anyone arriving at the portal without an account, designed to be genuinely useful at that stage rather than simply directing people to log in.
Back Office: Administrator, CDN, and Secretariat covers the internal management of OA services. is where the Order manages its services. The three sub-areas reflect the internal structure of the OA and ensure that each team works within a system configured for its specific responsibilities.
Front Office: Candidates, Trainees, and Architects serves as the core member area.This is where architects submit requests, manage their profiles, access treasury services, retrieve documentation, and use QR code validation. The design prioritises speed and clarity, since most users arrive with a specific task in mind.
Interoperability and Additional Services covers the integrations that make the portal function within Portugal’s broader digital public administration ecosystem. SCAP, AMA, iAP, and the OA’s internal systems all connect here.
Impact of the Order of Architects Portal
A portal that reflects how architects actually work
Before the new Order of Architects Portal launched, members navigated a system built for a different version of the organisation. Regional sections were not reflected in the experience. Services that should have been digital required manual intervention. Certificates were issued through processes that were slower than they needed to be.
The new portal changes this at a structural level. Members can request and receive professional certificates without leaving the platform. Document signing with SCAP integration means architects can execute signed approvals digitally, with their professional attributes attached. QR code validation means those certificates can be verified instantly by whoever needs to check them.
Administrative modernization in practice
The Single Desk model that AMA promotes requires services to be accessible, integrated, and dematerialised. All three criteria are met. Members reach services through a single point of access. Those services connect to national systems without requiring the OA to act as an intermediary for every transaction. As a result, paper-based processes have given way to digital workflows.
Interoperability that works
In practice, connecting to SCAP, AMA, and iAP required more than technical integration. It required understanding how those systems behave in practice and building a portal that handles edge cases gracefully. An architect attempting to sign a document through SCAP needs that process to complete reliably, not to encounter errors at the point of signing.
The scheduled tasks built into the portal handle the maintenance work that would otherwise require manual effort: keeping data current, processing requests that come in outside working hours, and ensuring that the systems the portal depends on are queried correctly and on schedule.
For the OA as an organisation
Naturally, the impact is not limited to member experience. The back office gives OA staff a system adapted to their actual workflows. The Administrator, CDN, and Secretariat each work in an environment configured for their role, reducing the friction that comes from using generic tools for specific organisational purposes.
Control over member data is clearer and more auditable. Authentication and permission controls mean that access is managed at the system level rather than through informal arrangements. For an organisation that holds professional data for architects across Portugal, that matters.
