Create a Partner Portal, Enable Partner Account and Users, and Add Members

Follow Along with Trail Together

Want to follow along with an expert as you work through this step? Take a look at this video, part of the Trail Together series.

(This clip starts at the 1:50 minute mark, in case you want to rewind and watch the beginning of the step again.)

Create a Partner Portal

Ursa Major’s first step in expanding its business with partner resellers is sharing pertinent CRM data with partners. Maria, the Ursa Major system administrator, wants to create a partner portal using Experience Cloud to make data sharing a breeze.

First, she takes a peek at this video to understand how portals, communities, and sites, and their users, live within the Salesforce org.

Now, Maria starts setting up a partner portal. Go ahead and take these steps in your Trailhead Playground.

1. From Setup, enter Digital Experiences in the Quick Find box, then select Settings.
   
2. Select Enable Digital Experiences.
   
3. If enhanced domains are enabled in your org, your digital experiences domain is shown. It includes your My Domain name in the format MyDomainName.my.site.com for production orgs.
   
4. If enhanced domains aren’t enabled in your org, select a domain name, and click Check Availability to make sure that it’s not already in use. We suggest that you use something recognizable to your users, such as your company name. The domain name is the same for all sites. You create a unique URL for each site when creating it by entering a unique name at the end of the URL. For example, if your domain name is UniversalTelco.force.com, and you're creating a partner portal, you can enter partners to create the unique URL UniversalTelco.force.com/partners.  
   

Keep in mind that you can’t change your domain name after you enable digital experiences.

1. Click Check Availability to make sure the domain is available.
   
2. Click Save, then OK.
   

Next, we’re going to change the number of partner roles to two. We touch on what this means later on in the project, but it’s essential to make this change now.

1. From Setup, enter Digital Experiences in the Quick Find box, then select Settings.
   
2. Under Role and User Settings, increase the number of partner roles to 2.
   
3. Click Save.
   

Now that you’ve enabled digital experiences and increased the number of partner user roles, let’s set up a bare-bones partner portal. You should have been redirected to the All Sites page in Setup, but if not, enter Digital Experiences in Quick Find, and select All Sites.

1. Click New. The Creation wizard appears with different template options for you to choose from.
   
2. Select the Partner Central template.
   
3. Click Get Started.
   
4. Name the site Ursa Major.
   
5. Add UrsaMajor to the end of the URL so that the final URL ends with /UrsaMajor.
   
6. Click Create.
   

Your portal is now in Preview status, which means that what you’ve created so far isn’t in the world yet. Take a quick look around. This is Experience Workspaces, and you'll be coming back here soon to customize and administer your site.

Add Partner User Actions to the Account and Contact Page Layouts in Lightning Experience

After you enable digital experiences in your org, Salesforce adds specific actions to your account and contact page layouts in Lightning Experience so that you can create partner accounts and partner users. Let’s check to see if you have Enable as Partner in the dropdown menu of your accounts and contacts.

1. From the App Launcher select Accounts.
   
2. Select the All Accounts list view and click any account.
   
3. Click the dropdown menu to see all the quick actions available for the page.
   
4. If you see Enable as Partner, skip to Enable Partner Accounts and Create Partner Users.
   

If you don’t see Enable as Partner, follow these steps.

1. From Setup, click Object Manager.
   
2. Click Account  | Page Layouts | Account Layout.
   
3. In the page layout editor, click Mobile & Lightning Actions. (You may need to click the wrench first to override customizations in the Lightning & Mobile Actions section.)
   
4. Drag the Enable as Partner and Disable Partner Account buttons to the Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions section.
   
5. Click Quick Save.
   

Now add the partner user buttons to the contact page layout.

1. From Setup, click Object Manager.
   
2. Click Contact  | Page Layouts | Contact Layout.
   
3. In the page layout editor, click Mobile & Lightning Actions.
   
4. Drag the Enable Partner User button to the Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions section.
   
5. Click Quick Save.
   

Enable Partner Accounts and Create Partner Users

Now, we can enable a couple of accounts as partner accounts. Let’s enable Edge Communications and Express Logistics and Transport as partner accounts in our Trailhead Playground.

1. From the App Launcher, select Accounts.
   
2. Select the All Accounts list view.
   
3. Click Edge Communications.
   
4. Click the dropdown menu to see all the quick actions available for the page.
   
5. Click Enable as Partner.
   
6. In the confirmation dialog, select Enable As Partner.
   

Repeat these steps for Express Logistics and Transport.

Now that we’ve created partner accounts, we can convert their contacts to partner users. Partner users are Salesforce users with access to CRM objects, such as opportunities, leads, and campaigns. Partner users can access and modify the Salesforce data you share with them by logging in to a portal.

Let’s create some partner users.

Before you create partner users, ensure that the admin user (you in your Trailhead Playground) has a role assigned. 

1. In Setup, enter Users in the Quick Find box.
   
2. Click Edit next to your user and assign yourself any Role you’d like (go for CEO… why not?).
   
3. Click Save.
   

Now, let’s head to Accounts.

Communities licenses are used in Experience Cloud sites.

1. Click the App Launcher and select Accounts.
   
2. Click Edge Communications.
   
3. Click Sean Forbes from the contact related list.
   
4. From the dropdown menu, select Enable Partner User.
   
5. Change the following in the New User detail page.
   

• Email: [Enter your email address so you can get login information for your newly created users.]
  
• Username: [unique username in an email format]
  
• User License: Partner Community 
  
• Profile: Partner Community User  The best practice here would be to clone the Partner Community User profile, and go through all the user permissions with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that all the settings are ones that you want. To allow standard external profiles to be used, select the Allow using standard external profiles for self-registration, user creation and login in Setup > Digital Experiences > Settings.
  
• Role (if asked): [account name] Partner User
  
• Deselect Salesforce CRM Content User.
  
• Deselect Receive Salesforce CRM Content Email Alerts.
  
• Select the Generate new password and notify user immediately checkbox.
  
• Click Save.
  

6. Follow the same steps for other contact records.
   

• Rose Gonzalez (in Edge Communications)
  
• Babara Levy (in Express Logistics and Transport)
  
• Josh Davis (in Express Logistics and Transport)
  

Add Profiles to Your Portal’s Membership

Now that you’ve created a basic portal, enabled partner accounts, and created partner users, you’re ready to add members to your portal.

1. From Setup, enter Digital Experiences in the Quick Find box, then select All Sites.
   
2. Click Workspaces next to the Ursa Major portal.
   
3. Click Administration | Members.
   
4. To add members using profiles:
   

• Select the Partner Community User and Customer Community User profiles. (If you don’t see the profile, change the search to All.)
  
• Click Add.
  
• Click Save.
  

Since you chose to generate a password and send an email to your members, you should receive a welcome email.

Didn’t get a welcome email? It probably means that your portal is still unpublished and in preview mode. Let’s fix that.

1. From Setup, enter Digital Experiences in the Quick Find box, then select All Sites.
   
2. Click Builder next to the Ursa Major portal.
   
3. Click Publish, and in the confirmation dialogue, click Publish again. Then click Got it in the next confirmation dialogue.
   
4. Click to navigate to Administration.
   
5. Click Settings.
   
6. Click Activate, and click OK.
   

You should receive emails for each of the partner users you created with your own email address. You can use these four partner users to test out the various visibility settings we customize in this project.