Compliance sharing settings

Configure how elements are shared between companies in your group.

The Compliance Sharing Settings screen is the control center for cross-company data collaboration within your DPMS group. It lets you decide whether your organization shares its compliance records — such as records of processing activities, risk assessments, and policies — with other legal entities in your group, and exactly which of those entities are permitted to access your data. If you are a DPO, compliance manager, or IT administrator working in a multi-company environment, this is the screen you visit to set up, adjust, or shut down inter-company sharing. Getting this right is important: the sharing switch and the partner company list together determine what flows between organizations, which has direct implications for data minimization obligations under GDPR and similar regulations.

How to open it

In the left-hand sidebar, navigate to the Group Settings section. Select Sharing from the navigation menu. The page loads immediately at /compliance/settings/sharing.

Heads up: You need at least read permission for Compliance Sharing Settings to see this page at all. Without it, DPMS shows a standard "403 Forbidden" screen — no partial content, no navigation. To make any changes, you also need edit permission. If you can see the page but the edit button appears grayed out, your account has read access but not edit access.

What you see

The screen sits inside the Group Settings shell. On the left side is the vertical settings navigation menu — "Sharing" is highlighted as the active item. The main content area on the right contains everything described below.

At the top of the content area is a clean card labeled Sharing. It shows a single labeled row: the word "Sharing" on the left and either Active or Inactive on the right, reflecting your organization's current sharing status. To the right of the card title is a pencil (edit) icon. If your account has edit permission, clicking this takes you to the edit form. If you only have read permission, the icon is visually dimmed and hovering over it reveals a tooltip explaining that you lack the necessary permission.

Directly below the status card — but only when sharing is currently Active — a table appears listing every company your organization is currently sharing data with. Each row shows the partner company's name and country. If sharing is Inactive, this table is completely hidden; there is no empty-state message, it simply does not appear.

Working with this screen

Imagine your DPO has asked you to enable data sharing with a parent company. When you land on the Sharing page, the status row reads Inactive and no company table is visible.

Click the edit icon to the right of the "Sharing" card title. DPMS navigates you to the edit form.
On the edit form, you will see a single toggle switch labeled Sharing, currently in the off position (gray background). Click the toggle — it turns blue to indicate it is now on.
Click Save. DPMS sends your change to the server. On success, a confirmation notification appears and you are returned to the Sharing index page.

Back on the index page, the status row now reads Active. A new section has appeared below the status card: the "Shared With Companies" table. It is empty for now, because you have turned sharing on but have not yet configured any partner companies. Sharing is active in principle, but no data is actually shared with anyone until you add at least one partner company.

Tip: Activating sharing without adding partner companies has no practical effect on your data. Always complete both steps: enable sharing, then configure partners.

If the save fails — for example, because another user modified the same record while your form was open — an error notification will appear and you will stay on the edit page. Reload the page to get the latest data before trying again.

With sharing now active and the companies table empty, your next step is to add the organizations that should have access.

Navigate to the company management edit page (accessible from within the Group Settings area). This is a separate page from the sharing toggle edit page.
The page shows a list of currently linked companies — in this case, empty. Click the Create button at the top right of the table. A small menu appears with the available options for adding a company.
Select the option to link an existing company. A search field appears — type the name of the partner organization (for example, your parent company) and select it from the results. The company appears as a new row in the table.
Click Save. DPMS submits your updated partner list to the server.

On success, a confirmation notification appears. Returning to the Sharing index page, the companies table now shows the newly added organization with its name and country. From this point, that company is recognized as a sharing partner across the platform.

Tip: The company management page and the sharing toggle page are two separate edit screens. There is no single "edit everything" form. If you expect to configure both at once, navigate to each page in turn.

Switching to a different partner company or adding more companies

Returning to the company management edit page at any time lets you add further organizations or review who is already listed. Clicking on any row in the companies table — both on the index page and on the edit page — navigates you to that company's detail record, where you can review its profile.

If your organization's inter-company sharing arrangement has ended, you can turn it off in two steps.

On the Sharing index page, click the edit icon on the "Sharing" card. The edit form opens.
Click the toggle to move it from blue (on) to gray (off). Click Save.

On success, DPMS updates your organization's sharing flag and redirects you back to the index page. The companies table below the status card immediately disappears — it is hidden whenever sharing is inactive. Importantly, the partner company records themselves are not deleted. If you reactivate sharing later, those companies reappear in the table automatically. No data is lost.

Heads up: Turning off sharing removes the "Sharing" option from the options menu of every individual compliance element (records of processing, assets, vendors, etc.) across the entire platform — for all users in your session — immediately. Other users will see the change after their next page load.

Reviewing the configuration before an audit (read-only access)

If you have read-only access, you can still view the full configuration. The Sharing status card shows "Active" or "Inactive," and if sharing is active, the full list of partner companies is visible with their names and countries. The edit icon is dimmed with a tooltip explaining the permission restriction. You can click on individual company rows to view their detail records. No changes can be made from a read-only session.

Field reference

The edit form for the sharing toggle contains one field:

Sharing — A toggle switch. Turn it on (blue) to allow your organization to participate in inter-company compliance data sharing. Turn it off (gray) to stop sharing. The change is not applied until you click Save. If you navigate away using the Back arrow without saving, your change is discarded.

The company management edit page uses a table-style interface rather than a traditional form. There are no free-text fields to fill in — you select partner companies from your existing company records using the Create menu and its search function.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

The sharing configuration you set up here is one of the most consequential settings in the system because it affects behavior across the entire platform.

What depends on this screen:

The "Sharing" option on individual compliance elements. When sharing is active, a "Sharing" menu option appears on detail pages for individual ROPAs, assets, vendors, DPIAs, and other elements throughout DPMS. This lets compliance officers configure sharing for specific elements. When you turn sharing off here, that option disappears from every element detail page simultaneously — for all users, immediately in their current session.
Consulted companies. The partner companies you link here become available as "consulted companies" in other parts of DPMS — features that let your team view or reference compliance data shared from partner organizations. If no companies are linked, those features have no data to display.
Access control within the current session. The list of sharing partners is stored in the authentication state. Changes take effect immediately for the user making the change, and for other users after their next page load or login.

What to do after finishing this screen:

Once sharing is active and partner companies are configured, check the detail pages for your key compliance elements (ROPAs, DPIAs, vendor records) to configure element-level sharing where needed. The "Sharing" option will now be visible in the options menu of each element.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: Always complete both steps when setting up sharing for the first time: (1) activate the sharing toggle, then (2) go to the company management page and add your partner organizations. The status card will show "Active" even if the company table is empty, which can be misleading.

Heads up: When sharing is inactive, the partner company table is completely hidden — but your partner company list is not deleted. If you reactivate sharing in the future, all previously configured companies will reappear. You do not need to re-add them.

Separate edit pages. The toggle for enabling/disabling sharing and the table for managing partner companies are on two different edit pages. Expect to navigate twice to configure both.
Edit permission is strictly separate from read permission. A user who can see this page but cannot edit it will find the edit button visually disabled with a tooltip. This is intentional, not a bug.
Concurrent edit protection. Both the toggle save and the company list save use a conflict detection mechanism. If another user modifies the same settings while you are on the edit form, your save will be rejected. Reload the page to get the latest data, then make your change again.
Immediate platform-wide effect. Changes to the sharing toggle take effect globally as soon as you save. The "Sharing" option appears or disappears on individual element detail screens right away in the current browser session — no page reload needed. Other users see the change after their next page load.
Read-only table on the index page. The companies table on the main Sharing page is for viewing only. To add or remove partner companies, you must navigate to the dedicated company management edit page.

Compliance sharing settings