Specify who can see your particular product by sharing a product from your private catalog with other accounts, enterprises, users in your account, or account groups. Those accounts can then create instances of any version that is in the ready or pre-release state. Versions that are in the draft state cannot be shared.
You can share your product from your private catalog with any account without needing approval from Partner Center. The target account must accept the share request. For more information, see Accepting share requests for private catalog products.
However, if you are already approved in Partner Center, you can share your product with any user by adding their account to the allowlist. In that case, the share request doesn't need to be explicitly accepted by the other account.
The following flowchart shows the use cases for sharing your product. Each pathway addresses who you want to share your product with, how to share it, and if you need approval through Partner Center. If you need approval from Partner Center, see
Selling on IBM Cloud.
Figure 1. Flow chart of sharing a product to other accounts or publishing with Partner Center approval
A pre-release version does not need to be validated before you can share it from your private catalog. However, a pre-release version must be validated if you are going through Partner Center. A ready version
must be validated before you can share it. For more information, see Validating the software.
Before you begin
Your account must be assigned the Publisher and Viewer access roles for the Catalog Management service to share products with other accounts. For more information, see Access management in IBM Cloud.
Verify that at least one version of your product is in either the pre-release or ready state.
Sharing your product by using the console
When you share your product from your private catalog with another account, you are asking the target account for permission to share products now and in the future rather than just one product at a time. In doing so, you are adding that account
to an allowlist, which is a list of IDs that are granted access to the product. When the target account accepts your initial share request, that account is opting in to having access to future products that you share from the same account.
You need to send a separate share request only if you want to share a product for a different catalog type (Product or Virtual Private Endpoint). Any account that is not included in the allowlist can't access your product. For more information,
see Accepting share requests for private catalog products.
Complete the following steps to share your product:
In the IBM Cloud® console, click Manage > Catalogs > Private catalogs.
Select the private catalog where your product is located.
Select the catalog type (Product or Virtual Private Endpoint) of the product that you want to share.
Select the product that you want to share.
Select Actions... > Share.
Review the list of versions that are available to share.
If you don't see the version that you want to share, make sure that the version is in the ready or pre-release state.
Select one of the following options:
Share to this account to make the product available to any user who has access to this account. Then, click Share.
Share with other accounts to add IDs for accounts that you want to share your product with. Enterprise IDs are prefixed by -ent-, and account groups are prefixed by -entgrp-. This option is used
to create an allowlist of other accounts to which you want to share your product.
Adding accounts to the allowlist
If you selected the option to share with other accounts, complete the following steps:
On the Manage allowlist page, select Add accounts.
Select the type of account, such as individual account, enterprise, or account group.
Enter one or more account IDs, and click Add. You might need to contact the account owner to obtain the ID.
If you want to add other accounts of which you are a member, click Add your accounts. A list of your accounts is displayed.
Select one or more of your accounts, and click Add. When the allowlist table is displayed, note that the Share state column in the table is in Pending status. The share request is in a pending
state until it is accepted.
If you want to delete an account from the allowlist, select the account, and click Delete.
Click Share. In the version list, the Visibility status is now changed to Shared.
Checking the share request status
Complete the following steps to check the status of your share requests:
In the IBM Cloud console, select Manage > Catalogs > Share requests.
Click Sent requests to show the table of all your requests.
If the target account accepted the request, the request state is Accepted.
If the target account denied the request, the request state is Rejected.
