Sharing Elements

The Sharing configuration screen is the master switch for your organisation's cross-company compliance collaboration. Until you enable sharing here, the option to share individual elements — such as Records of Processing Activities (ROPA), assets, or Technical and Organisational Measures (TOMs) — will not appear anywhere in DPMS, for any user. Once you enable it and add partner companies, your colleagues can begin sending and receiving compliance objects with those partners directly from each element's options menu. This screen is therefore the very first step whenever your organisation joins a multi-entity compliance group, such as a parent company distributing policy templates to subsidiaries or a data processor receiving ROPA records from a controller.

How to open it

Navigate using the left-hand sidebar to the Compliance Settings group and select Sharing. This opens the screen at the /compliance/settings/sharing address inside the Compliance Settings layout.

Permissions: You need at least read access to the Compliance Settings – Sharing section to see this screen at all. Without it, DPMS shows a "Forbidden" page instead of the screen content. To make any changes — toggling sharing on/off or managing partner companies — you also need edit access to the same section. If you have read access but not edit access, the Edit button on screen is greyed out and shows a tooltip explaining that the permission is missing. Contact your IT administrator or system owner if you need access adjusted.

What you see

The screen has two sections, one of which only appears once sharing is switched on.

At the top of the main content area is the Sharing status panel. It shows a single row: the label "Sharing" on the left, and either "Active" or "Inactive" on the right. In the top-right corner of this panel sits a pencil (Edit) button — this is your entry point to change the setting.

Directly below the status panel — but only when sharing is set to Active — the Shared with Companies table appears. It lists every partner organisation your company has configured as a sharing target, with two columns: Name and Country. Each row is clickable, taking you to that company's details. When no partners have been added yet, the table shows an empty state placeholder. If sharing is Inactive, the table is completely absent from the screen.

Working with this screen

Enabling sharing for the first time

If your organisation is new to DPMS's multi-company collaboration features, you will arrive here and see Sharing: Inactive. Here is how to turn it on:

• Click the Edit (pencil) button in the top-right corner of the Sharing status panel. DPMS takes you to the edit form.
• On the edit form, you will see the Sharing toggle, currently switched off (grey). Click the toggle — it turns blue, indicating Active.
• Click Save. DPMS sends the change to the server, updates the platform state, and redirects you back to this index page. The status row now reads "Active".

As soon as sharing is Active, two things happen across the whole application: the Shared with Companies table appears on this page, and the Sharing option begins to show up in the options menus (⋯) of individual compliance elements throughout DPMS. No user needs to log out and back in — the change takes effect immediately.

Adding partner companies to your sharing list

With sharing switched on, your next step is to tell DPMS which organisations you are allowed to exchange elements with. An empty sharing list means no exchanges can happen in practice.

• From the Sharing index page, locate the Shared with Companies table and click the link or button in the table header area to open the Companies edit view. DPMS navigates to the Companies sub-page.
• On the Companies edit page, you will see the full editable table. If the partner company already exists as a record in your DPMS, you can search for it and link it directly. If not, click the Create button (the animated button with a dropdown) to create a new company record. Fill in the partner's Name and Country.
• Save your changes. The partner company now appears in the Shared with Companies table on the index page, and your organisation's users can start selecting that company as a recipient when sharing individual elements.

Tip: You can add as many partner companies as your organisation needs. Each one maps to a separate company record in DPMS, so their names and countries should reflect the real legal entities you are collaborating with.

Configuring sharing on an individual element

Once the platform-level sharing is Active and your partner companies are listed, your DPO or compliance team can configure sharing on each element separately. This is done from the element itself, not from this Compliance Settings screen.

• Open the element you want to share (for example, a specific ROPA entry or asset).
• Click the ⋯ (ellipsis / options) menu in the element's detail view and select Sharing. This opens the Group Sharing tab within the element's edit form.
• On the Group Sharing tab, choose the partner company and configure the sharing settings for that element. Save the element.

The Group Sharing tab will only appear when the platform-level sharing is Active. If a colleague reports that they cannot see the Sharing option in an element's menu, the first thing to check is whether sharing is still enabled on this Compliance Settings screen.

Receiving and reviewing consulted elements

When a partner organisation shares an element with yours, your users will see it in DPMS as a consulted element — a read-only copy bearing a visual indicator that it came from another organisation.

Consulted elements are intentionally locked for editing: the Edit button is disabled and the Activity Log button is absent. This is by design — your organisation can read and use the content but cannot alter the partner's record. Even users who normally have full edit rights will see this behaviour on consulted elements, which sometimes surprises power users. It is not a permission problem; it is how the consulted model works.

Disabling sharing

If your organisation needs to step back from all sharing arrangements — for example, after a group restructure — you can turn sharing off without losing your configuration:

• Click Edit on the Sharing status panel.
• Toggle Sharing off (back to grey).
• Click Save.

The status row returns to "Inactive", the Shared with Companies table disappears, and the Sharing option vanishes from every element's options menu across the whole application. Importantly, this does not delete your partner company list — all previously configured companies are still stored. If you re-enable sharing later, they will reappear immediately. Think of this as hiding the sharing capability organisation-wide, not erasing it.

Field reference

Sharing toggle (on the edit form)
The single on/off control for the platform-wide sharing feature. When set to Active (blue), sharing UI appears throughout DPMS. When Inactive (grey), all sharing-related controls are hidden everywhere. There is no default value set automatically — a newly created organisation starts with sharing Inactive until an administrator explicitly enables it.

Name (on the company record)
The name of the partner organisation. Supports multiple languages. Displayed in the Shared with Companies table. Required in practice — a company record without a name is difficult to identify.

Country (on the company record)
The country of the partner organisation. Optional, but useful for distinguishing between companies with similar names across different jurisdictions. Displayed in the Shared with Companies table.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

The Sharing configuration screen is the foundation on which all element-level sharing in DPMS rests. Its Active/Inactive state controls a flag that is checked every time any element's options menu is assembled. If the flag is Inactive, no element anywhere in DPMS — not a ROPA entry, not a TOM, not an asset — will show the Sharing option, regardless of what permissions individual users hold.

Once you have enabled sharing here and added partner companies, your team's next destination is the individual elements they need to share. From each element's detail view, the ⋯ menu → Sharing path leads to the Group Sharing tab, where the element-specific recipient and configuration are set. The Compliance Settings → Sharing screen does not need to be revisited for each element — it is a one-time (or occasional) platform configuration, not a per-element workflow.

Auditors reviewing your DPMS configuration should note that this screen gives a complete read-only view of both the sharing status and the full partner company list, accessible without edit permissions.

Tips & common pitfalls

Heads up: Disabling sharing does not remove your partner company list or any sharing history. It simply hides all sharing UI. Re-enabling it restores everything instantly.

Tip: If a user reports that the Sharing option has disappeared from element menus, always check this screen first — it is almost always because the platform-level toggle has been switched off.

• The edit page does not save drafts. If you open the edit form, change the toggle, then navigate away without saving, your change is discarded. When you return, the form opens in a clean state. There is no autosave or draft functionality on this form.
• If a save fails, the toggle may look wrong. A network error during save can leave the toggle visually in its new position even though the backend was not updated. If you are unsure whether a save succeeded, refresh the page — the status panel always reflects the last successfully saved state.
• The Companies edit page is only useful when sharing is Active. You can technically navigate to the Companies sub-page at any time, but adding partner companies while sharing is Inactive is pointless — they will not participate in any sharing workflows until the platform toggle is switched on.
• Consulted elements are read-only by design, not by accident. When your organisation receives a shared element from a partner, its Edit button is intentionally disabled. This will affect even your most privileged users. Train your team to expect this so they do not raise false permission issues.
• Both authentication state and IT settings state are updated on save. When you toggle sharing and save, DPMS updates two internal state stores simultaneously. In normal use this is seamless, but if you ever see sharing UI behaving inconsistently after a change — appearing in one part of the app but not another — a full page refresh (F5) is the reliable fix.