Onboarding Experience (OBX) Configuration
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External Sharing Admin

(OBX) Set-up External sharing

Enable and configure Public Share Services to use features such as External Sharing and Calendar Sync for Precursive.

  • 13-Aug-2024
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(OBX) Set-up External sharing
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About-External-Sharing
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About

External Sharing allows you to share Precursive Boards with anyone outside of Salesforce with a simple link. Boards with External Sharing enabled will generate a unique URL that can be sent to anyone and grants the viewer 'Read-Only' access to the Board. The external viewer will not be required to log into Salesforce with a username or password.

Your customers will be able to view the shared Board and its Tasks, except the ones marked as Internal Only (please see Marking Tasks as Internal Only for more information), and view your shared notes within their details, but will not be able to edit nor complete Tasks.
 
External Sharing is a feature that is not enabled out of the box and needs to be set up by a Salesforce Admin. In this article you can learn how.

External Sharing Considerations

Please be aware of the following considerations before opting-in to "Public Share Services":
  • "Public Share Services" is available in Enterprise, Unlimited, and Performance Edition Salesforce customers only. The feature requires the creation of “Force.Com Sites”. This capability is not available with Group or Professional Editions. The feature requires setting up Salesforce Sites. External Sharing is not currently supported for Salesforce Group, Essentials, or Professional Editions.
  • It requires one full Precursive Licence to be assigned to a "Public Share Service" user. If you need to purchase additional licenses, please reach out to your assigned CSM or contact customersuccess@precursive.com
  • Opt-in to this feature enables external access to your tasks unless they are hidden. Please learn about Marking Tasks as Internal Only if you don't want to customers to see them. Also, please only share this link on a need-basis and with trusted users.
  • Enabling "Public Share Services" is done entirely at your own risk. If you are unsure about enabling "Public Share Services", you should discuss this within your organization.
Salesforce User Permissions Needed:
To create and edit Salesforce Sites : Customize Applications
 

How to Configure External Sharing

Step 1: Create a Public Share Services Force.com Site

In this step, you will create a specific subdomain for Precursive Public Share Services, for use in Precursive External Sharing and Calendar Sync features.
  1. Go to Setup > Sites
  2. If your company has not yet defined a Force.com domain name, define one now. Note that you won’t be able to change the domain name once it has been defined.
  3. Next, In the Sites section, Click New to define a subdomain.

Fill in the following:
Site Label: Precursive Public Share Services
Site Name: Precursive_Public_Share_Services
Site URL: MyCompany.force.com/precursive
Active Site Home Page: iCalService

The Site Label and Name are created at your discretion, but we suggest a name that clearly identifies the purpose of the site, such as “Precursive Public Share Services”. You may also include a description, but leave all other options as is.
 

4. Check the box for Require Secure Connections (HTTPS)

 

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5. Click Save. A new page will load. Once saved, Salesforce will generate two new subdomains with the “Precursive” suffix (we will refer to the secure Custom URL in later steps). It also generates a new “Site Guest User”, who is essentially anyone you share the public URL with. 

6. Click ActivateScreenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.34.46.jpg

Step 2: Assign a Precursive License to the newly created “Site Guest User"

  1. From the Site Details page, click Public Access SettingsScreenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.34.46.jpg
  2. Next, click View Users
  3. Select the Site Guest User and click under Full Name to assign this user a Precursive License*. The User’s detail page will load.
  4. Under Managed Packages, click Assign Licenses.
  5. Click Add to assign a Precursive OBX license

Note -  this counts as one full Precursive OBX License in Production and Sandbox environments. Please reach out to your assigned CSM or contact customersuccess@precursive.com if you need to purchase additional licenses.

Step 3: Assign the “Site Guest User” a Precursive OBX External User Permission Set

  1. From the User’s detail page, click Permission Set Assignments
  2. Select Precursive OBX External User
  3. Click Save

Step 4: Create a sharing rule to automatically grant access to boards that are public 

Add Precursive OBX Board Sharing Rules
  1. Navigate to Setup > Security > Sharing Settings
  2. Select Edit and scroll to the bottom to find the option “Secure guest user record access” check this box and saveUser-added image
  3. This will enable a new type of sharing rule which we will now use
  4. From the “Manage sharing settings for” picklist choose Precursive Boards
  5. Create a new Sharing Rule called “External Sharing”
  6. Choose “Guest user access, based on criteria”, set the criteria as “Precursive Board: External Sharing EQUALS Public”
  7. Then choose “Share with” as the Public Guest Site User for the Site you created for External Sharing (unless you are using Sites or Communities you will just have one option)
  8. Leave “Access Level” as Read-only

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To share Task Categories through External Sharing you will need to configure a sharing rule as follows:
  1. Navigate to Setup > Security > Sharing Settings
  2. From the “Manage sharing settings for” picklist choose Precursive Task Category
  3. Create a new Sharing Rule called “External Sharing”
  4. Choose “Guest user access, based on criteria”, set the criteria as “Active EQUALS True”
  5. Then choose “Share with” as the Public Guest Site User for the Site you created for External Sharing (unless you are using Sites or Communities you will just have one option)
  6. Leave “Access Level” as Read-only.

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Note:
  • To share Precursive Board Type object through External Sharing you will need to configure a sharing rule as was described for Task Categories.
  • It's not possible to share Board Process Path via External Sharing with customers. That is not visible via External sharing.

Step 5: Configure External Sharing in the 'Precursive OBX' Application Settings 

  1. Go back to the Salesforce Setup > Sites
  2. You will be asked to 'Register My Salesforce Domain' - tick the checkbox you find there and click on 'Register My Salesforce Domain'
  3. Scroll down and click on the 'Precursive Public Share Services' label Screenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.18.19.jpg
  4. Scroll down to find the 'Custom URL' section
  5. Click 'View' Screenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.21.46.jpg
  6. Copy the URL of the page that opens up Screenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.22.30.jpg
  7. Use the AppLauncher to navigate to the Precursive OBX tab Screenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.22.56.jpg
  8. Click on the wrench icon on the bottom left to access the 'Application Settings' Screenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.23.06.jpg
  9. Navigate to the 'External Sharing' tab and paste the link in the 'External Sharing Force.com Site URL' field Screenshot 2023-03-24 at 16.23.16.jpg
  10. Click Save.


 

Setup your Logo for External Sharing

When sharing Boards with customers, it would be great to have them branded with your company colors and logo. And you can set these up when you Set-up External sharing if you have an image URL readily available. 

However, if you don’t have access to any hosting for your images (a website server or service to host images on) or if you want to take your logo to the next level and prevent loading delays, the best option that we recommend is to use Static Resources.

What are Static Resources?

"Static resources allow you to upload content that you can reference in a Visualforce page, including archives (such as . zip and . jar files), images, style sheets, JavaScript, and other files." (cit. Salesforce Dictionary)

How can that impact my loading time, you ask? Using the link that Salesforce creates for your image makes it easier for the system to load it than an external URL. Or, in other words, if you are keen on technical terms as we are..Static Resources allows for a much shorter URL to input and because you're not cross-referencing the full environment request twice when external sharing (once for loading the page, and one for the image), the page will load much faster.

If we have convinced you with these scientific facts, here below you can find all steps you need to follow to setup up your logo using Static Resource! 

How to Setup your Logo for External Sharing using Salesforce Static Resource

  1. Navigate to the Salesforce Setup and look for 'Static Resources' in the quick find box (you will find it in the Custom Code section)This image is not available because: You don’t have the privileges to see it, or it has been removed from the system
  2. When presented with the list of Static Resources, click on the 'New' button, add a memorable Logo Name and click the Choose file button to select the desired logo you want to upload:This image is not available because: You don’t have the privileges to see it, or it has been removed from the system
  3. Once you've clicked the Save button, you'll be taken to the Resource screen. If the image has uploaded correctly, you'll see a value greater than 0 next to the Size field - if not, click the Edit button and attempt to upload it again. If successful, you'll see the following View file link underneath the Size field:This image is not available because: You don’t have the privileges to see it, or it has been removed from the system
  4. Click View file and it will open the image in a new tab in full resolution. Right-click on the image, and click 'Copy Image Address':This image is not available because: You don’t have the privileges to see it, or it has been removed from the system
  5. You now have the logo image location in your clipboard! Navigate to the Precursive OBX tab. Click on the the Spanner icon in the bottom-left corner to open Application Settings:This image is not available because: You don’t have the privileges to see it, or it has been removed from the system
  6. Then navigate to the External Sharing tab and paste the copied image address into the Default Logo URL field, removing everything before '...resource/' so all is remaining is resource/[iD]/NameOfResource. Once populated, click Save.

This image is not available because: You don’t have the privileges to see it, or it has been removed from the system
 
If that's been done correctly, you should see the logo populated when you open any shared Board in another tab!

How to set up the External Sharing option as 'Public' by default

By default, Precursive Boards are private and can only be visualized by their assigned Team Members. If you want to Share a Board with External Sharing, you first need to set the External Sharing field to 'Public'. This step can be skipped if you set the picklist value for this field to 'Public' by default.

Note - This is not recommended to prevent security breaches!

How to Set Up External Sharing Option as 'Public' by Default

  1. Navigate to the Salesforce Setup
  2. Click on Object Manager
  3. Look for 'Precursive Boards'
  4. Click on 'Fields & Relationships'
  5. Look for and click on 'External Sharing' Screenshot 2022-10-10 at 12.10.29.jpg
  6. Scroll down to find the 'Values' section
  7. Click 'Edit' next to the 'Public' value Screenshot 2022-10-10 at 12.10.42.jpg
  8. Tick the box 'Make this value the default for the master picklist'Screenshot 2022-10-10 at 12.10.57.jpg
  9. Save

Field-Level Visibility in External Sharing

By default, External Sharing viewers may not be able to see all of the Precursive data which is visible to your internal users, such as Checklist items or custom fields. However, Salesforce System Administrators can clone the standard Precursive OBX External User permission and configure field-level visibility for the External User Profile.  

Salesforce User Permissions Required
To create and edit Force.com sites:Customize Application


Customizing Field-Level Visibility for External Sharing

Use Case


Do you want your customers to see custom fields when you share the plan with them?

Use the steps below to make a Task custom field, such as Notes (rich text area that can contain URLs and images) visible in External Sharing.

User-added image

There are different ways to customize what viewers outside of Salesforce can or cannot see when you share a Board with them using External Sharing.

Firstly, you can predefine any tasks you don’t want viewers to see so you only share those that are relevant to people outside of your organization (Mark Tasks as Internal Only).

For those Tasks that they are allowed to see, only certain parts will be visible by default.

When custom fields are created in Taskfeed Tasks and you wish to display them through External Sharing, your Salesforce Administrator can modify the default permissions that define what External viewers can see.

The Following instructions are a step-by-step guide to modify the default visibility permissions within External Sharing

In the example below, we will enable External Sharing visibility of a custom Notes field in Precursive OBX Task.

To configure these steps, External Sharing must be enabled in your Organization first (Set-up External sharing).
 

SALESFORCE USER PERMISSIONS NEEDED

To create permission sets:

“Manage Profiles and Permission Sets”

To assign permission sets:

“Assign Permission Sets”

 

Step 1

  1. Navigate to Setup and in Quick Find enter Permission Sets

  2. Find the Precursive OBX External User standard permission set and Clone.

  3. Modify the Name and description, then click Save. In our example, we will call this permission Precursive OBX Custom External User.

  4. Select the cloned Precursive OBX Customer External User permission.

  5. Go to Object Settings and select Precursive OBX Tasks.

  6. Click Edit.

  7. Go to any custom fields that are currently not visible in External Sharing and select check the Read Access checkbox next to each field (it is not possible to give external viewers Edit Access. If Edit Access is manually selected, Precursive OBX will override those permissions and give Read Access only).

  8. Click Save.

Step 2

  1. Navigate to Setup and in Quick Find and enter Sites

  2. Select Precursive OBX Public Share Services

  3. Click Public Access Settings

  4. Select View Users

  5. Scroll down to Permissions Set Assignments | Manage Assignments

  6. Select and modify the appropriate permission set, from Precursive OBX External User to Precursive OBX Custom External User. Click  Save.



Related Resources

How to set up the External Sharing option as 'Public' by default

 
 
 
 
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