Finally, this post concludes a series exploring record access considerations with the different portal user license types. This post covers the Partner Portal type.

By way of reminder, the decision tree below should be used when making the high-level decision on the appropriate license type for the different user populations within your portal.

Partner Portal
The Salesforce partner portal supports partner relationship management (PRM) scenarios such as Opportunity collaboration, Lead sharing etc. Enabling businesses to manage channel activities within Salesforce in parallel to their direct sales. As with all external user access scenarios it is imperative that the visibility model provides partners with relevant data access, but no more. Partner portal users have the Gold Partner user license type – it is my understanding that the Silver and Bronze license types are no longer available.

CRUD permissions :
Create on Account, Asset, Cases, Contacts, Custom Objects, Idea, Lead, Opp – basically all the SFA standard objects.
Read on most standard objects
Update – as create, excluding Idea

Default record access :
Partner portal users are placed in the role hierarchy as below, as descendant roles of the Account Owner’s role.

So for each account where a Partner Portal user is activated (Acme in the case above), a set of 3 roles is created under whichever role the account owner has allocated. Executive users can view manager owned records and so on. The number of roles created can be set between 1tans 3, giving control over partner user sharing granularity versus proliferation of user roles (and consequential impact on performance).

Sharing options :
Role-based and criteria-based (CBS) sharing rules, manual sharing, Apex Sharing, Apex Managed Sharing.
Account and Sales teams.
Can have the “Super User” permission – this provides access to data owned by users within the same role or below in the portal account hierarchy, limited to Cases, Leads, Custom Objects and Opportunities

Other considerations :
Introducing a partner portal requires a full analysis of the sharing model implemented within a Salesforce org. Public sharing means public to partners also. This principle equally applies to report and document folders. Listviews with names which reveal something you don’t wish your partners to see should also be secured.

Note. This page on the Salesforce help site provides an excellent reference for further information.