Launching a Partner Experience is a multi-week effort, not a single Setup task. The summary below covers the standard sequence from license provisioning through go-live, with the assumption that the org has an active Channel program ready to invite partners. Sandbox first; iterate on the layout with a small pilot of friendly partners before broad rollout.
- Provision the Experience Cloud license and enable Digital Experiences
Work with the Salesforce account team to confirm Partner Community or Partner Community Plus licenses are loaded onto the org. From Setup, navigate to Digital Experiences and enable the feature if it has not been turned on. Pick a domain prefix that the partner-facing URL will use. Once Digital Experiences is enabled and the domain is reserved, the All Sites and Settings pages become available for creating sites.
- Create the site from Partner Central template
From the All Sites page, click New Site and select Partner Central. Name the site, choose the URL path, and create. Salesforce provisions the site, its standard pages, and the supporting metadata. Open the site in Experience Builder, walk through each default page, and start customizing layout, branding, and navigation. Reserve a few hours for this initial exploration so you understand the site's structure before making large changes.
- Configure profiles, sharing rules, and partner roles
Clone the Partner Community User profile and customize the cloned profile to grant the right object and field access for partner users in your program. Set Organization-Wide Defaults for partner-accessible objects (split internal and external if you have not already). Define partner sharing rules so partner users see only the records associated with their own Account. Set Partner Role hierarchy options for each tier of access (User, Manager, Executive). Test by creating a sample partner Account, a Contact under it, and enabling the Contact as a partner user.
- Build deal registration, train pilot partners, and publish
Configure the Deal Registration object (often Lead with custom routing, or a custom Deal Registration object), build the Approval Process, and add the relevant page to Experience Builder. Invite three to five pilot partners to a sandbox version of the portal. Run a two-week pilot, capture feedback, iterate on layout and field selection, and only then publish the production site. Communicate the launch through a dedicated email and webinar to the broader partner community.
- Partner users authenticate through Experience Cloud login, not the standard Salesforce login. Setting up SSO requires a separate Identity Provider configuration on the Experience Cloud site.
- External sharing is a one-way door once enabled. Plan the OWD split carefully and test in sandbox before flipping the toggle in production.
- Login-based licenses charge per login, not per user. A partner who logs in five times in a month consumes five licenses, which is a meaningful cost factor for active partners.
- Experience Builder customizations do not always promote cleanly through change sets. Test the deployment path in a staging org before promoting site changes to production.
- Field-level security on partner-accessible objects applies to partner users too. Hidden fields on the partner profile are hidden in the portal regardless of page layout selections.