Create and Manage Community Users

Overview

When we create a community, we usually forget to test the functionality with right user so we log in to community as a system administrator because either we put off the problem or our lack of Salesforce community experience (that happened to me in the past). This post shows how to create these community users and log in as them. I highly recommend to test with community users since the beginning of the project or the user story to save future problems (and time).

We can find three sort of community users (at least for now):

• Customer Community User
• Partner Community User
• Unauthenticated Users

Although you can find different community licenses (Costumer Community Plus, Costumer Community Login…), the way to create the user and have access in the community are the same.

For more information about Salesforce licenses, visit this link.

Customer Community User

Create a new account and name it ‘Customer Account’.

Create a contact related to this account and name it ‘Customer Contact’.

On the contact record, click on the ‘Enable Customer User’ button.

Fill the user record information and click on ‘Save’.

You will receive an email to set your password. If you want to log in as a community user from Salesforce platform, go to the created contact and click on ‘Log in to Community as User ‘ button and select your community.

Partner Community User

Create a new account and call it ‘Partner Account’.

On the contact record, click on the ‘Enable as Partner’ button.

Create a contact related to this account and name it ‘Partner Contact’.

On the contact record, click on the ‘Enable Partner User’ button.

Fill the user record information and click on ‘Save’.

You will receive an email to set your password. If you want to log in as a community user from Salesforce platform, go to the created contact and click on ‘Log in to Community as User ‘ button and select your community.

Unauthenticated Users

If you have a public community page which the users do not have to log in, go to

Setup -> All Communities -> Copy your community url

I suggest to paste the url in an incognito window to verify you are not log in as any user. Check on the top left you are not log in. You should see ‘LOGIN’ instead of an username.