Customer portal: recommended way to scope lookup fields to the logged-in client?

Customer portal: recommended way to scope lookup fields to the logged-in client?

Hi all,

I'm building a customer portal on Creator for our clients (we're a esting lab, so each client has their own sites, contacts and jobs). Planning stage, so I'd rather get the approach right before I build it.

The portal forms need several lookup fields: Site, Contact, Project, Purchase Order. Each client must only ever see their own company's records in those dropdowns, never another client's.

How should I go about this?

Do the portal permission sets cover lookup fields, or do I need to set a filter on each lookup separately?

If it's filters, is a lookup "Set Filter" using zoho.loginuserid the right approach for portal users? Is that the pattern Zoho recommends, and can I rely on it?

Is there a better pattern for multi-tenant portals generally? For example, do people keep the portal forms in the same app as the internal/staff forms, or separate them?
Any pointers to the right documentation would be great, I may well have missed a page.

Thanks.