The joke in MS offices that use the portal UX is often that it was a UI designed by Designers, or at least by someone who only ever saw screenshots of the UX in a powerpoint.

It's not much comfort, but know at least that the internal engineers feel the pain as much as you do and would love to see improvement in that area, but right now there seems to be a surprising amount of likely political willpower pushing its use against informed resistance. I make this post largely to encourage you to keep speaking up about the pain of the UI, since many of us certainly are internally.