With Cerby, you have a secure and controlled way to collaborate with external parties, such as contractors, agencies, vendors, and clients, through Partners.
This feature helps you and your company support sharing access to your items and business hub integrations with collaborators who don't belong to your domain and don’t have access to your Cerby workspace through your identity provider (IdP), such as Okta or Entra ID.
After adding a partner to your Cerby workspace, access to your items and seat-based and paid social apps is centralized in Cerby. Therefore, your company retains control over these items and apps, and gains visibility into their usage by external collaborators. We understand that, for you, having visibility of end-user actions is a significant effort in preventing security risks and facilitating effective collaboration.
Figure 1 shows the Partners page in the Cerby web app dashboard, where you can manage your partnerships.
Figure 1. Partners view in the Cerby web app dashboard
Currently, Cerby supports the following ways to add and collaborate with your partners:
The following sections describe each way.
Host-guest partnership
A host-guest partnership enables you to establish a secure connection between an existing host workspace and a guest workspace created for this purpose. Both workspaces are managed by their respective Admins, and the guest workspace is configured as a local user workspace.
Through this connection, you can share accounts with external collaborators invited as users in the guest workspace. With this partnership type, you retain complete control over the shared accounts and gain visibility on their usage.
With this partnership type, Cerby introduces the following roles, as described in Table 1.
Role | Description |
Partnership Owner | It is a role assigned automatically to the user from the host workspace who adds the partnership. With this role, they can perform the following actions:
|
Host workspace Admin | It is a user from the host workspace who has the Admin role. With this role, they can perform the following actions:
|
Guest workspace Admin | It is a user from the guest workspace who has the Admin role. With this role, they can perform the following actions:
|
Account Manager | It is an account-level role assigned by the partnership Owner when sharing an account with the guest workspace; by default, it is assigned to the guest workspace Admin. With this role, they can perform the following actions:
IMPORTANT: Account Managers cannot manage the account security settings. |
Table 1. Host-guest partnership roles and their descriptions
Any user in the host workspace can add a host-guest partnership. To establish the connection, you send a partnership request that must be approved by a host workspace Admin and accepted by a guest workspace Admin.
After adding the partnership, only you as a partnership Owner can share accounts with the guest workspace and assign one of the following roles over the accounts:
Collaborator: Guest workspace members can only log in to shared accounts.
Manager: Guest workspace members can log in to shared accounts and request access to these accounts for other members.
For more information about roles, read the article How Cerby manages roles.
IMPORTANT: A host workspace can have multiple host-guest partnerships. However, they can only establish one connection with the same guest workspace.
Local partner
A local partner enables you to invite external collaborators who don't belong to your domain directly to your workspace, without creating a separate guest workspace. These collaborators become a subgroup or organization of guest users to whom you can share your accounts.
In this partnership type, you retain full control over the accounts you share, and you can perform user management tasks on the guest users. For example, you can add or remove external collaborators from your workspace as needed.
Additionally, as guest users are part of your workspace, using an identity provided and managed by Cerby, you can share your accounts either with the local partner or directly with the guest users.
With this partnership type, Cerby introduces the following roles, as described in Table 2.
Role | Description |
Host Admin | It is a role assigned by the workspace Admin to another workspace user when adding a local partner. With this role, they can perform the following actions:
|
Guest Admin | It is a role assigned by the workspace Admin to a guest user when adding a local partner. With this role, they can perform the following actions:
NOTE: Guest Admins can’t add other local partners, import items from LastPass, or view workspace users, policies, or settings. |
Guest User | It is a role assigned to an external collaborator invited to join a Cerby workspace with limited access to items and assets, enough to perform their activities. |
Account Manager | It is an account-level role assigned by the Host Admin when sharing an account with the local partner; by default, the role is assigned to the Guest Admin. With this role, they can perform the following actions:
|
Table 2. Local partner roles and their descriptions
Only as a workspace Admin, you can add a local partner to your workspace. While adding it, you can designate any workspace user, including you, as the Host Admin, granting you control over who can manage the partnership and external collaborators. Also, you must designate and invite a Guest Admin to join your workspace.
The following are the benefits of having Host and Guest Admins:
Delegate ownership: Host Admins can invite and assign other workspace users as Host Admins, sharing control and responsibility over the partnership.
Expand collaboration: Host Admins can invite external collaborators from the partner's organization, selecting between granting them Guest Admin privileges for management capabilities within the partnership only or Guest User access for limited access, visibility, and interaction.
Delegate user invites: Guest Admins can invite external collaborators to your workspace as Guest Users.
Propagate access to accounts: With the account Manager role, Guest Admins can share with other Guest Users the accounts that were initially shared with them by Host Admins.
For more information about roles, read the article How Cerby manages roles.
Native partner
A native partner is a business or organization (agency, media planner, or consultant) already existing as a partner in your paid social apps for collaboration purposes in ad campaigns.
By connecting your partner to Cerby, you gain visibility on the users who access your assets from your partner's side. This level of visibility is not even achievable through the business manager of your paid social app, such as Meta Business Manager or TikTok for Business.
With this partnership, Cerby does not introduce any new role because it is a read-only capability. The user who connects a native partner is the App Owner in Cerby.
After establishing the partnership, you can sync and import the information of the partner’s users with shared access to your assets, providing you with a granular and centralized oversight of your business manager.
IMPORTANT: You can only add a native partner in Cerby if you have shared at least one asset with a partner in your paid social app or vice versa.
Unlike a local partner, where external collaborators exist in your workspace using an identity and account managed by Cerby, the user management capabilities remain in the paid social apps when you connect with a native partner. Therefore, your partners don’t have to use Cerby.
Currently, Cerby supports the Native Partner feature for the following paid social apps:
Meta Business Manager
TikTok For Business
Pinterest Business Manager