Online Community
An online community in Salesforce is a branded, secure website that connects customers, partners, employees, or members to the Salesforce platform without giving them full internal user licenses.
Definition
An online community in Salesforce is a branded, secure website that connects customers, partners, employees, or members to the Salesforce platform without giving them full internal user licenses. The product that powers these sites is Experience Cloud (formerly Community Cloud and earlier just Communities). A single org can host multiple online communities, each with its own URL, branding, user audience, and content model, all sharing the underlying Salesforce data.
Online communities solve four classic problems. Customers can submit cases, browse Knowledge articles, and discuss issues with peers without a license to the full Sales or Service Cloud. Partners can register and update opportunities tied to a shared deal-registration pipeline. Employees can access HR documentation and submit IT tickets through an intranet experience. Members of associations, alumni networks, or patient groups can collaborate on shared interests. Each persona consumes the community through a different license type and template.
How an online community is built on the Experience Cloud platform
Experience Cloud templates as starting points
Experience Cloud ships with five primary templates: Customer Service, Partner Central, Build Your Own (LWR), Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce, and the deprecated Koa and Kokua templates. Customer Service is the most popular, designed for self-service support with case deflection, Knowledge articles, and discussion forums. Partner Central is built for channel sales with deal registration and opportunity sharing. Build Your Own (LWR) gives full Lightning Web Component freedom for custom designs. Picking the right template at launch shapes everything downstream; switching templates later usually means rebuilding.
Authentication and user license types
Online community users authenticate against the org through Salesforce Identity, an external OIDC provider, or a SAML identity provider. Each user holds a specific community license: Customer Community (basic CRUD on Cases, Accounts, Contacts), Customer Community Plus (richer including reports and dashboards), Partner Community (Opportunities and Leads), External Apps (custom platform usage), and External Identity (authentication-only). The license dictates what objects the user can access; profiles and permission sets further restrict within the license.
Data sharing and visibility
Community users are external; they should not see internal company data by default. Salesforce uses sharing sets, share groups, and account-based sharing to grant just-enough access. A customer should see their own Account and Contact records but no others. A partner should see their channel partner Account and the Opportunities marked as shared with them. Misconfigured sharing rules in communities are the most common source of data leaks; audit them carefully before going live.
Self-service patterns: cases, Knowledge, and chatter
The dominant customer use case is self-service: a user logs in, searches Knowledge articles, tries to find the answer, escalates to a case if needed. The Customer Service template wires this up out of the box: a search bar that hits Knowledge, a Case-deflection screen that asks the user if the article solved the issue before submitting a Case, a chatter feed for peer discussion. The metrics that matter are deflection rate (Cases avoided) and time-to-resolution; both go up dramatically with a well-curated Knowledge base.
Branding and component customization
Experience Builder lets admins drag standard components (Search, Knowledge Articles, Case List, Reputation Leaderboard, Topics) onto pages, set the branding (logo, colors, fonts), and configure menus. For brand fidelity beyond what the builder allows, drop in custom LWCs. Many enterprises run online communities with 30 to 50 percent custom LWC content layered on the standard templates, which is the sweet spot between starting from scratch and locking into the templates as shipped.
SEO, performance, and discoverability
Online communities sit on a public URL (typically [orgname].my.site.com/[community-name]). For public content (Knowledge, public forums), search engine optimization matters: configure meta tags through Experience Builder, enable structured data with the Knowledge schema, and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console. Page load times directly affect community adoption; lazy-load custom LWCs, optimize image sizes, and use the platform CDN. The LWR template performs significantly better than the older Lightning Communities template.
How to launch an online community on Experience Cloud
Spinning up a basic customer-service community takes about a day if Knowledge is already set up. Branding, custom components, and rollout planning add weeks. Plan for two to three months from kickoff to public launch on a mid-sized implementation.
- Enable Digital Experiences
Setup > Digital Experiences > Settings. Check Enable Digital Experiences. Set the domain name; this is permanent once chosen so pick carefully. Save.
- Create the community
Setup > Digital Experiences > All Sites > New. Pick the template (Customer Service for support, Partner Central for channel, Build Your Own LWR for custom). Provide a name and URL slug.
- Configure user licenses and profiles
Assign the appropriate Community license type to each persona. Create a profile for community users with limited object access and no Setup permissions. Use permission sets for fine-grained access.
- Build pages and components in Experience Builder
Open Experience Builder. Drag standard components onto pages. Configure menus, footers, and headers. Add custom LWCs where the standard components fall short.
- Set sharing and visibility
Configure sharing sets so each community user sees only their own data. Test as a community user (Login As) to confirm no internal data leaks. Iterate sharing until access is correct.
- Publish and roll out
Click Publish in Experience Builder. Test the public URL. Pilot with a small user group, gather feedback, then announce to the full audience. Monitor adoption metrics for 30 days post-launch and tune based on real usage.
For self-service support communities. Includes Knowledge, Case Deflection, Discussion Forums out of the box.
For channel partner portals. Includes deal registration, Lead distribution, Opportunity sharing.
Lightning Web Runtime template. Full LWC freedom, fastest performance, requires more development.
Legacy Aura framework. Avoid for new builds; LWR is the modern equivalent.
Old-school internal-style community. Used for legacy migrations only.
- Domain names are permanent. Once you set [orgname].my.site.com, you cannot change it without contacting Salesforce Support and waiting for manual provisioning. Pick wisely.
- Community user sharing is fragile by default. A misconfigured sharing rule can leak internal data to external users instantly. Always test as a community user before going live; never assume internal sharing logic protects external users.
- The Salesforce Tabs + Visualforce template cannot be migrated to a modern Lightning template. Legacy communities on this template require a full rebuild to upgrade.
- Custom LWCs in communities have access to a different API surface than internal Lightning. The Communities-specific subset of LWC lacks some Lightning Data Service features; review the official compatibility matrix before building.
Trust & references
This term has been renamed to Experience Cloud.
View current pageCross-checked against the following references.
- Experience Cloud Sites OverviewSalesforce Help
- Create an Experience Cloud SiteSalesforce Help
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Online Community.
- Experience Cloud DocumentationSalesforce Help
- Experience Cloud Developer GuideSalesforce Developers
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Online Community.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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