Plexara
What you will take away from this lesson
Every item in the portal has one answer to the question of who can open it: the owner, the people and groups it was shared with, and whoever its general link admits. The Share dialog shows that answer on one screen and changes it in place.
This lesson reads the dialog from top to bottom on an ACME collection prepared for a supplier, Blue Harbor Wholesale. Later lessons add the requests people send when they cannot open something, posts to a channel, the permissions behind the dialog, and people outside the company.
Learning Objectives
- 01Name the three kinds of recipient the Share dialog adds: a person, a group, and a guest.
- 02Explain why a share to a persona follows its membership without anyone editing the share.
- 03Change what a person can do, or remove them, in place, and use Undo.
- 04Choose the general access an item has, and say what changing it does to a link already sent.
- 05Say what a restricted share does when its email is forwarded.
Where this lesson sits
Lesson 303 shared a report with a colleague. This series takes sharing past the team: groups that follow membership, requests for access, posts to a channel, the permissions behind all of it, and clients and suppliers who sign in to see what you share with them and nothing else.
800 Series: Working with People Outside the Company
- 801Who can open whatThe Share dialog by access: people and their roles, personas as groups whose membership is read when the item is opened, guests, and the one general link an item has.
- 802Requests for accessWhat a person without access sees, how the owner approves as viewer or editor or declines from the email, the Inbox or the dialog, and the limits and expiry an administrator sets.
- 803Posting to a channelPosting an item to a Slack, Mattermost or email channel as a link share of its own, what the channel sees, who the link opens for, and removing it.
- 804Portal permissionsThe persona editor by surface, one access level per portal area, the sharing permission, the access summary, and what deleting a persona checks first.
- 805Your clients as external peopleAn external persona per client organization, accounts that live in your identity provider, and the fixed limits: only what is shared, only shared threads, no sharing, no agent.
- 806Files from outsideUploads into an external person’s own folder, the External files folder staff open, and registering a client’s monthly file as a table beside the warehouse.
- 807Capstone: a supplier’s collection, thread and monthly fileAn ACME supplier collection shared with the supplier’s persona, a shared thread beside an internal one, and the supplier’s next price sheet registered and joined into the review.
The 800 series builds on sharing within the team from lesson 303 and registers a client’s file the way the 500 series does. Every example is on the ACME demo tenant, with a fictional supplier, Blue Harbor Wholesale.
The Share dialog
Share opens one dialog that answers who can open the item. It opens on the Share view, with five parts.
The Share dialog, top to bottom
Add people or groups
- One box. Typing lists matching groups first, each persona with how many people it reaches now, then people from the directory. A full address nobody in the directory has is offered as a guest. Anyone who already has access is marked Has access and cannot be picked again.
People with access
- The owner, then each person and group in the order they were added. Each row has a menu: Can view, Can edit, or Remove.
General access
- Who can open the item without being added. An item has one general link, set here.
Posted to channels
- Each post of the item to a channel, with how often its link was opened and Remove beside it. Lesson 803 covers posting.
Copy link, Post to a channel, Done
- Copy link copies the general link, or the item’s own portal page when it has none, which opens for the people with access.
Share is offered to the item’s owner when their persona allows sharing. Assets, collections, prompts and files all use this dialog. A file has no general link and no public post.
People, groups and guests
Picking a result starts Adding people: a chip for each recipient, one role for all of them, Send an email, ticked when the dialog opens, and an optional message of up to 500 characters that travels only in that email. The message takes text, not links: a link inside a trusted platform email is a phishing risk, so one is refused.
Three kinds of recipient
| Recipient | Named by | Roles offered | Who opens it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A person | Their own account | Can view or Can edit | Opens it signed in as themselves |
| A group | A persona | Can view or Can edit | Everyone who resolves to the persona when they open it, and nobody else |
| A guest | An address with no account | Can view only | Views the one item, never gains portal access |
While a guest is among the recipients being added, Can edit is disabled, and the server refuses an editor grant to an address with no account.
Sharing with a group
On the demo tenant, the collection prepared for Blue Harbor Wholesale was shared with the supplier’s persona as a group, and with an ACME analyst as an editor.
Sharing a collection with a group
What the agent calls. This is the exchange the agent has with Plexara on your behalf, shown for the technical reader. You ask in plain language; you never type any of it.
GET /api/v1/portal/share-personas
Administrator 5 people
Analyst 0 people
Blue Harbor Wholesale 0 people External
Viewer 0 people
POST /api/v1/portal/collections/4ab560b3.../shares
{ "shared_with_persona": "supplier-blue-harbor",
"permission": "viewer", "notify": false }
201 share 182e0080...
access_mode restricted
shared_with_persona supplier-blue-harbor
permission viewerThe supplier’s persona was shared the collection before anyone at the supplier had signed in, so the count read 0. That does not matter: membership is read when someone opens the item. A person who joins the persona afterwards gains the collection, one who leaves loses it, and the share itself never changes.
Each current member is notified by their own notification preferences, and the share is listed once under People with access, by the persona’s name and its size.
Changing and removing access
Each row of People with access changes in place. Four rules decide what a change does.
Changing who has access
- 01
Changing a role applies at once
Switching a person from Can view to Can edit, or back, takes effect on their next request. No second email is sent.
- 02
Remove has five seconds of Undo
Undo shares with them again, with the same role, and sends no second email.
- 03
A share to a person is restricted
The link resolves only for that recipient, signed in. Forwarding the email or the address grants nothing: someone else signed in sees a page naming the account they are using, with a way to switch.
- 04
An older grant keeps its countdown
Shares no longer expire. A grant made before that keeps the expiry it was given, shown on its row.
One general link
General access is who can open the item without being added. An item has one general link, and the choice made here is the rule that link follows.
General access
| Choice | Access mode | Who opens the link | How long it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Only people added | No link | Only the people and groups listed | Not applicable |
| Anyone who can sign in | authenticated | Any signed-in user of your deployment | Until it is removed |
| Anyone with the link | public | Anyone holding the address, without signing in | An hour, a day, a week or thirty days |
Choosing a mode applies at once and keeps the link’s address, so a link already handed out follows the new rule. Moving from Anyone with the link to Anyone who can sign in makes every copy of that link ask for a sign-in, without anybody sending a new one.
While there is a link, the box under General access sets when it stops working and a banner for the shared page. For a public link it also chooses whether the page shows the date it stops working.
Where a recipient lands
Who can open what, on one screen
The owner, the people and groups listed, the general link and the channel posts are the whole answer to who can open an item, and every one of them is changed from the same dialog without sending a new link.
Key terms
Four terms cover who the dialog lets in.
Key Terms
- Group
- A persona chosen as a recipient. Its membership is read when the item is opened, so the share follows people joining and leaving.
- Guest
- An address with no account. A guest can only view the one item shared with them.
- General access
- Who opens the item without being added: only the people listed, anyone who can sign in, or anyone with the link until it expires.
- Restricted share
- A share to a person or a group. It opens only for that recipient, signed in, so a forwarded email grants nothing.