You might already notice that your organization switched to Winter 21  and the public site security policies are enforced and can no longer be disabled.

The following settings have been enabled:

• Secure guest user record access (Setup – Sharing Settings)

These sharing settings separate external org-wide defaults for registered users and guest users in Salesforce communities. The security update enforces the Private owd (org-wide default) sharing model for all objects for new and existing guest profiles and restricts the sharing mechanisms that you can use to grant record access.

As far as the “Secure guest user record access” setting enabled, the only way how you can share records with guest users is to create sharing rules in Salesforce.

To provide guest users with access to records, you should use a guest user sharing rule a special type of Salesforce criteria-based sharing rule that can grant Read-Only access.

Restrictions: guest users can no longer be members of a salesforce public group or queue, and manual sharing and Apex managed sharing is no longer available for guest users.

• Assign new records created by guest users to the default owner (Setup – Community Settings)

Guest users are no longer the records owners. New records created by guest users will be automatically assigned to a default user. The default user is the one who has created the community.

You can also change the default records owner in Experience (Community) Workspaces – Administration – Preferences.

Also, from  Winter ’20, Salesforce restricted the use of standard external profiles by default. You can enable the “Allow using standard external profiles for self-registration and user creation” feature in Setup – Community Settings, however.

• Let Guest Users See Other Members of This Community Setting Disabled

The setting “Let guest users see other members of this community”, is turned off by default in all Salesforce orgs With the Winter ’21 release.

However, you can turn the setting back on in Experience (Community) Workspaces – Administration – Preferences.

In addition, the following guest user object permissions are turned off with the Winter ’21 release and removed with the Spring ’21 release.

• Edit
• Delete
• Modify All
• View All

The preceding permissions are turned off for custom objects and the following standard objects: Order, Survey Response, ProfileSkillUser, and ProfileSkillEndorsement.

Potential Impact to Your Org with the Winter ’21 Release

All mentioned public security policies that have been enforced may affect your organizations and public communities in the following scenarios:

• Guest users may lose access to data.
• Guest users can no longer update or delete records.
• Guest users can no longer complete forms using Flows.
• Guest users may lose visibility to other users of the public site.
• Guest users can no longer upload files.
• The apex:inputField and other similar standard markup components, may no longer render for guest users on custom Visualforce pages or Lightning components.
• The lightning:outputField doesn’t render correctly for guest users if they no longer have edit permissions.

To avoid any potential impact on your organizations, check and prepare for upcoming release updates in Setup – Release Updates.

Hello, dear Friends! 

In this post, we want to remind you about what are the latest critical updates activated by Salesforce that may impact the usage of our applications and community itself for portal and guest users.

We strongly advise paying attention to the following Salesforce notification about critical updates, that are enforced in the nearest future and may affect the use of our components:

Restrict Access to @AuraEnabled Apex Methods for Guest and Portal Users

This critical update restricts access to Apex classes used by Aura and Lightning web components for portal and guest users.

All AC Lightning components refer to Apex Classes, we recommend checking and granting appropriate access for external users to avoid the component malfunctioning on the community. 

To set Apex class security from a profile or permission set:

• From Setup, enter Profiles or Permission Set that you want to grant access to
• Select a profile
• In the Apex Class Access page or related list, click Edit
• Select the Apex classes that you want to enable from the Available Apex Classes list and click Add
• Click Save

More information about Salesforce updates you can find in Release Notes.

Require Customize Application permission for direct read access to custom metadata types

This update will remove read access to custom metadata types for users without the Customize Application permission.

This change will affect the following Lightning components: AC E-Commerce, AC Member Directory, AC Partner Marketplace, AC Images and Videos Gallery.

To grant a profile or permission set read access to a custom metadata type:

• Go to the profile or permission set that you want to grant access to
• Under Enabled Custom Metadata Type Access, click Edit
• Add the custom metadata type to the list of enabled custom metadata types

More information on Salesforce critical updates you can find in Release Notes.

Require Customize Application permission for direct read access to custom settings

This update will remove read access to custom settings for users without the Customize Application permission.

This change will affect the following Lightning components: AC Ideas Ultimate, AC KnowledgeManagement Enterprise, AC Events Enterprise, Knowledge (Classic).

To grant a specific profile or permission set read access to custom settings:

• Search for Profiles or Permission Sets from Setup, then click the name of the profile or permission set
• Click the Custom Setting Definitions permission
• Click Edit, add the custom setting to the Enabled Custom Setting Definitions list, then click Save

More information on Salesforce updates you can find in Release Notes.

We recommend using an Enhanced Profile User Interface to view the full list of available Apex classes, Custom Settings, and Metadata Types. Enable Enhanced Profile User Interface in Setup – User Management Settings.

The list of all appropriate Apex Classes, Custom Settings,  and Metadata Types you can find in the documentation for each component. 

To see all upcoming critical updates in your Salesforce org, go to Setup – Release Updates.

If you have any questions or problems, do not hesitate to contact us at support@advancedcommunities.com