In most multi-tenant deployments, tenants are airtight — Tenant A never sees Tenant B's data. But there are valid scenarios where two tenants want to share specific records: a marketplace where buyers (Tenant A) see sellers' products (Tenant B), a partner integration where one tenant exposes a feed to another.
Two Sharing Models
- Owner-initiated: Tenant A opens a record and clicks “Share with…”, picks Tenant B and a permission level. Tenant B's eligible users get notified and can access the record from their own UI.
- Discovery-based: Tenant A marks the record as “discoverable by other tenants”. Tenant B searches a shared directory; matching records show up.
Permission Levels
- Read-only: Other tenant can see; cannot edit.
- Read-write: Other tenant can see and edit; changes show up in both tenants' history.
- Append-only: Other tenant can add child records or comments but cannot modify the parent.
Enabling Globally
- Open Site Settings → Multi-tenancy → Record Sharing.
- Tick which datastores allow sharing (default: all off).
- Choose sharing models per datastore (owner-initiated, discovery-based, or both).
- Set default expiry — records auto-unshare after this period unless renewed.
Worked Examples
- Marketplace: Sellers (tenant A) mark product records discoverable. Buyers (tenant B) search the global catalogue.
- Partner integrations: A consultancy (tenant A) shares specific project records with their client (tenant B) for collaboration.
- Mergers and acquisitions: A 90-day cross-share period lets two newly-merged orgs exchange operational data without immediately migrating.
Warning: Cross-tenant sharing breaks the airtight model many compliance frameworks (HIPAA, ISO27001) rely on. Get sign-off before enabling and audit the trail thoroughly.