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When dealing with External Users (Community/Experience Cloud users), standard sharing mechanisms like Role Hierarchies o29ften do not apply, especially for high-volume Customer Community licenses which do not use the Role Hierarchy at all.

Sharing Sets (Option B) are specifically designed to grant external users access to records associated with their Account or Contact. A Sharing Set allows an administrator to define a simple mapping: for example, "Grant access to Cases where the Case's Account matches the User's Account." This is the most efficient and scalable way to provide external partners visibility into records relevant to them without using complex Apex code.

While Apex managed sharing (Option A) could technically work, it is much more complex to maintain and is only available for "Customer Community Plus" or "Partner" licenses. Criteria-based sharing rules (Option D) are typically used for internal users or broad groups, not for granular, account-specific access for individual external partners. Sharing Sets provide a high-performance, declarative solution for controlling external record visibility.