Working with Partner Accounts means setting up the underlying Experience Cloud partner portal, enabling Accounts and Contacts for partner access, and configuring the sharing model and channel workflows. The walkthrough below covers the standard sequence from an unconfigured org to an active partner Account with portal access.
- Confirm Experience Cloud partner portal is provisioned
From Setup, confirm Digital Experiences is enabled and at least one Experience Cloud site exists using the Partner Central template (or a custom-built partner portal). Confirm Partner Community or Partner Community Plus licenses are loaded onto the org. Configure the partner-licensed user profile with the right object and field access. Without the portal foundation in place, enabling Partner Accounts has no effect; the partner users would have nowhere to log in.
- Enable the Account as a Partner Account
Open the Account record for the partner company. Click the Manage External Account action (or the equivalent action depending on the org's UI version) and choose Enable as Partner. Confirm the action. The Account is now a Partner Account. Verify by checking the Account's setup options and confirming the Partner flag is set. Repeat for every partner company that should have portal access. For bulk enablement of many partner Accounts at once, the Data Loader can update the Account's partner flag via API.
- Enable Contacts as Partner Users
For each Contact under the partner Account who should have portal access, open the Contact record and click Manage External User then Enable Partner User. The action launches the user-creation flow: assign a Partner Community license, set the username and email, pick the right partner user profile, assign the right partner role. Save. The new Partner User receives a welcome email with portal login instructions. Test the login by impersonating the user in a sandbox and confirming they see the expected records in the portal.
- Configure sharing rules and tier metadata
Define the sharing rules that govern what partner users see. For Leads, share with the partner Account when the Lead's Partner_Account__c field matches. For Opportunities, similar pattern. For custom objects (Deal Registration, Joint Plan, Marketing Resource Access), configure sharing rules per the program design. Populate the partner tier field on the Partner Account record. Validate the configuration by logging in as a sample Partner User and confirming the right records and sharing behavior. Iterate on edge cases (orphan records, missing sharing) before scaling to the broader partner population.
- Disabling a Partner Account immediately deactivates all its partner users. Restoring access requires re-enabling and re-provisioning. Treat the action as a significant change.
- Partner role hierarchy is scoped to the partner Account, not the org's Role Hierarchy. Misunderstanding the distinction causes visibility surprises during testing.
- Sharing rules anchored on the partner Account are the primary control for cross-partner data isolation. A misconfigured rule can leak one partner's data to another.
- Login-based licenses charge per login, not per user. Active partners on login-based licenses can run up cost quickly.
- Partner-tier metadata on the Account drives many downstream workflows. Inconsistent tier values create confusing portal experiences and reporting anomalies.