Big Idea or Enduring Question:

• How can you delegate site administration to external users while maintaining security and control?

Objectives:

After reading this blog, you’ll be able to:

1. Delegate site administration to external users.
2. Allow external users to manage users and permissions.
3. Maintain security and control while delegating access.
4. Reduce bottlenecks and improve site management.
5. And much more!

👉 Previously, I’ve shared several posts on effectively implementing key branding and SEO features for Experience Cloud sites. Why not check them out while you’re here?

1. Progressive Rendering in Experience Cloud Site: Faster Load Times, Better UX
2. Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Custom Robots.txt for Experience Cloud Sites
3. Provide Search Engines with Fresh Content Snapshots for Experience Cloud Sites

Business Use case

Olivia Bennett, a Junior Developer at Gurukul on Cloud (GoC), is part of a team working on building an Experience Cloud site for the company’s help portal. They are implementing the portal using High-Volume Portal Users with Customer Community Plus licenses to support a large user base.

To improve efficiency and reduce administrative workload, the team has identified a few trusted external users to assist with site administration. They want to delegate key user management tasks such as adding, updating, and deactivating users, resetting passwords, and managing permissions. 

Additionally, they want to allow Delegated Administrators to manage users with the following profiles:

1. Customer Community Plus – Custom
2. Customer Community User

These delegated administrators should also be assigned the View Reports & Dashboards permission set to access and analyze relevant data.

Automation Champion Approach (I-do):

You can delegate site administration to external users to enhance scalability and reduce administrative bottlenecks. External administrators can manage users by adding, updating, or deactivating members, resetting passwords, and handling permission settings.

This capability is available for users with Partner Community, Customer Community Plus, Gold Partner, Enterprise Administration, or Customer Portal Manager licenses, allowing them to assist with site management while maintaining security and control.

Step 1: Assign the Delegated External User Administrator Permission

To delegate site administration tasks to external users, you need to assign the Delegated External User Administrator permission. Creating a custom profile ensures that only selected external users have the necessary permissions while maintaining security and control. Additionally, the settings in Steps 2 and 3 are not available for Permission Sets, making it essential to configure them at the profile level.

1. Click Setup.
2. In the Quick Find box, type Profiles.
3. Select an existing custom profile or clone a profile that has the Customer Community Plus license type.
4. Scroll to the App Permissions section and click to open the page that allows you to manage app permissions for this profile.
5. Click Edit, check Delegated External User Administrator.
6. Click Save.

Step 2: Define Profiles They Can Manage

In this step, we specify which user profiles the delegated external administrator can manage. This ensures that they can only administer users with approved profiles, maintaining control and security over user management.

1. Scroll to the Delegated External User Profiles section and click to open the page.
2. Select the profiles that the Delegated External User Administrator can manage. In this case, select:
   1. Customer Community Plus – Custom
   2. Customer Community User
3. Click Save.

Step 3: Define Permission Sets They Can Manage

In this step, we specify which permission sets the delegated external administrator can manage. This allows them to assign specific permissions to users within their authorized scope, ensuring flexibility while maintaining security.

1. Scroll to the Delegated External User Permission Sets section and click to open the page.
2. Select the permission sets that the Delegated External User Administrator can manage. In this case, select:
   1. View Reports & Dashboards
3. Click Save.

Things to Remember

1. Delegated external user administrators cannot see custom fields on user detail records.
2. Customer Community Plus admins can remove the Role field from the Users compact layout to edit members.
3. Field-level security and page layouts control what account and contact fields they see.
4. They can assign all permissions included in the permission sets they manage.
5. To access personally identifiable information, they need the View Concealed Field Data permission.
6. The following buttons are available in Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions on the Contact page layout:
   1. Disable Partner User
   2. Disable Customer User
   3. Enable Partner User
   4. Enable Customer User
   5. View Partner User
   6. View Customer User

Formative Assessment:

I want to hear from you!

What is one thing you learned from this post? How do you envision applying this new knowledge in the real world? Feel free to share in the comments below.