Salesforce Communities

Points to consider before enabling Salesforce Communities

Each community member will be a contact. Enable the contact to be a member in the community. When contact is enabled to become a community member then the contact will become a user. Then user will have a profile and role assignment.

Community user will be assigned with Role and Profile to control access to objects and sharing rules.

There are two types of communities
1) Customer Community
2) Partner Community

***Once we establish domain for the community, then it cannot be changed

1) Ensure that you have all you need before creating a community. New communities start in preview mode, allowing to test them internally before publishing.


External Members

1. Create Profiles / Permission Sets
2. Consider tabs
3. Consider Login Method
1. User Name
2. - Self-registration
3. - Authentication Provider

Steps for enabling communities

1. Got to Setup
2. Admin Area
3. Build -> Customize
4. Communities section
5. Click on Settings
6. Select the Enable Communities checkbox
7. Provide domain name for the community
8. Click Save

Steps for enabling view global header

1. Go to System Administrator Profile
2. Click on system permissions
3. Edit System permissions
4. Check the check box next to View Global Header

Steps for creating communities

1. Go to Setup
2. Admin Area
3. Build->Customize
4. Communities Section
5. Click on manage communities
6. Click new communities button
7. Provide name and url
8. Click on Create button

***Once you create a community it will only be visible to administrators initially.

Configure the newly created community before publishing

After community is created click on edit button and perform below settings

1. Go to Members section
2. Identify the profiles that needs to be given access to community
3. Identify the permission sets that need access to community
4. Tabs and Pages Section - Identify the tabs that needs to be part of the community
5. Go to Login Page section and configure the logo on the login page
6. Configure email section and mention the template for welcome email

Adding External Members to a community

External community members can be enabled directly from their contact records. Each member has a user record where the profile determines what tabs and features are accessible in the community. Partner community members also have a role which determines records access.

Controlling access on visibility of records created by other users in community

1. Go to Setup
2. Security controls area
3. Click on sharing settings
4. Go to user visibility settings section
5. Verify community user visibility checkbox is checked or unchecked

Steps to publish the community

1. Go to setup
2. Go to customize section
3. Click on communities link
4. Click on manage communities link
5. Click on edit the community
6. Click on publish

Permission required to Create Communities Users from Contacts

To allow an external user to access your community, enable the user’s contact record as a customer user or partner user, depending on the user’s license type. Your community can contain users with Partner Community, Customer Community, and Customer Community Plus licenses.

Provide below user permissions to the user from which new contact is promoted to community user.

To create customer users : "Manage External Users" or "Edit Self-Service Users"
To login as an external user : "Manage Users" or "Edit" on Accounts.


Promoting contact to community user

1. Go to any contact record detail page
2. Click on manage external user button
3. Click on enable customer user link
4. System will redirect to New user record with data prepopulated with user details
5. Please notice the user license field will have value as Customer Community
6. Select the required profile and save the user record

Steps for logging into contact as community user

1. Drill down the user contact record and navigate to contact detail page
2. Click on manage external user button
3. Select log into community as user

Customer Community Plus License

The Customer Community Plus license is similar to a Customer Portal — Enterprise Administration license and is well-suited for business-to-consumer communities focused on managing customer support.

The CCP license is more powerful than the Customer Community license. It provides:

• Roles and Sharing
• Delegated Administration capabilities
• Reports and Dashboards (read only)
• Tasks
• Additional storage (1MB for login-based license; 2MB for member-based license) 

***10 Custom Object can be created per CCP license.