Partner Permissions

Control who can open a partner record, share it with specific people or units, and approve or deny access requests.

Every partner record carries its own permissions. Each user's access is worked out from the sharing grants on the record, and determines how much of the partner they see when they open it.

TIP: CRM contacts use the same sharing model with a different default. See Contact Permissions.

Access Tiers

Tier	What the user sees	How it's granted
Restricted	The partner is listed, and its Name, Start date, End date, Site, Unit, Owner, and record timestamps are visible. Opening it shows a limited preview with a Request access button.	The floor — every user in your organization holds at least this much.
View	The full partner record, read-only.	A sharing grant with View Only access that reaches the user.
Edit	The full record, with the ability to change it.	A sharing grant with View & Edit access, or being the record's owner, the owner's supervisor, a Data Manager, or an Organization Administrator.

NOTE: A partner is never hidden from a list. Restricted users can see that the record exists and who owns it — that is how they know whom to ask. What the tier protects is the rest of the record.

The Baseline Grant

When you finish a partner's General Information, PEARS creates the record's first sharing grant automatically, targeting the Unit you selected. Everyone in that unit — and in the units beneath it — gets View Only access.

Every later share adds another grant. Access is the union of every grant that reaches a user, so the widest grant wins.

TIP: The baseline grant is created once. Editing the partner later never re-widens a record whose owner has already narrowed or removed that first grant.

Share a Partner

1

Open the Permissions section

From the partner record, click Permissions in the progress panel.

2

Add a share

Under Shared with, add a grant and choose what it targets:

• Person — One user.

• Unit — A unit and every unit beneath it.

• Organization — Your whole organization.

3

Choose the access level

Set the grant to View Only or View & Edit.

4

Save

The Scope column on the sharing table shows whether each row reaches a Person, a Unit, or the Organization.

NOTE: Managing a record's sharing grants is not itself a tier — it is limited to the record's owner, the owner's supervisors, Data Managers, and Organization Administrators. A user with View & Edit can change the partner's data but cannot re-share it.

Request Access

A user at the Restricted tier sees a limited preview of the partner and a Request access button. Clicking a locked row in the Partners list opens the same request.

1

Choose the access you need

Select View Only or View & Edit.

2

Add a reason (optional)

Explain why you need access. The reason is shown to the record owner.

3

Submit

PEARS emails the record owner. The request appears on the partner record as Pending.

Respond to an Access Request

Pending requests are listed on the partner record under Pending access requests. The owner can:

• Approve — Creates a sharing grant for that user at the access level requested.

• Deny — Closes the request without granting access.

A user can have only one open request per partner at a time.

Related Documentation

• Contact Permissions — The same model applied to CRM contacts.

• Collaborators — Record-level sharing in the other PEARS modules.

• Editable Users — How supervisor access is determined.