You create an external user by enabling an existing Contact, not by adding a User from scratch. Salesforce builds the User record for you and links it to the Contact. The exact action depends on whether the person is a partner or a customer, and the account behind them must be set up first.
- Prepare the account
For a partner user, enable the related Account as a Partner Account first. For a customer user, make sure the Contact's Account has an owner who is assigned a role. Without this, the enable action is blocked.
- Open the Contact
Find or create the Contact record for the person. In Lightning Experience, open the actions dropdown on the Contact. In Salesforce Classic, use the Manage External User button.
- Enable the user
Choose Enable Partner User or Enable Customer User. Salesforce opens a new User record with the name and email pre-filled from the Contact.
- Assign license, profile, and role
Pick the external license (Customer Community, Customer Community Plus, or Partner Community), select a community profile, and set a role if the license uses the role hierarchy.
- Control the welcome and save
If the site is not live yet, deselect the option to generate a new password and notify the user immediately. Save the record to provision the external user.
The person being enabled. The User record links back to this Contact, and its Account scopes data access.
The external license, such as Customer Community or Partner Community. It sets the upper bound on features and objects.
A community-specific profile that defines object access, field-level security, and the absence of Setup access.
Required for licenses that use the external role hierarchy (Customer Community Plus, Partner Community). Keep the role count low for performance.
- You need Manage External Users, Manage External Users (Limited), or Manage Customer Users permission to enable the user.
- A customer Contact's Account must have an owner assigned to a role, or the Enable Customer User action will not appear.
- Deselect the immediate password email when the site is still in setup, or the user gets a login link to a site that is not ready.
- External users cannot open Lightning Experience or Salesforce Classic, so do not test their access from the internal app.