Exploring Global Access

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to discover the key features of Global Access and how to configure to provide customers a consistent user experience regardless of physical location.

Key Features

In an interconnected world, customers expect a consistent experience no matter where they are. A customer who initially creates an account in Europe may travel to the United States; there, thanks to Global Access in SAP Customer Data Cloud, they can log in to their existing account without difficulty.

Key Features of Global Access

Diagram showing key features: Consistent user experience, User data is stored at the account creation data center, Data residency regulations are upheld, User data is stored in different data centers, and Single user database with users from multiple regions.

Global Access is designed to provide your customers with a consistent user experience, regardless of their physical location, every time they interact with your brand.

With Global Access, when customers travel to different parts of the world and log in to your localized sites, they log into their existing account and continue their relationship with your brand. User data is stored at the data center they used to create their account so that data residency regulations are upheld without compromising the user experience.

For more information refer to the Global Access documentation in the SAP Help Portal.

Site Configuration and Data Residency

Screenshot of site domains, each in its own data center. These represent site configuration and the location of their user database.

Global Access replicates site configurations across all configured data centers, including:

Site settings
Schema
Policies
Permission groups
User keys
Screen-sets

However, it's crucial to note that the user database is never replicated between data centers. This approach applies to both Single Global Sites and Global Site Groups.

Global API keys, which are relatively short and start with 4_, facilitate this replication. When global site configurations are saved, SAP Customer Data Cloud creates a replica of these configurations in all relevant data centers.

Account Data Residency

Screenshot of Identity Access page, which shows the data center assigned to each user. That data center also appears on each user's Account Information page.

When Global Access is enabled for your partner, Identity Access includes a new "" column that displays the relevant flag. The user record also shows the Data Center where the user’s data resides.

For more information refer to the following documentation in the SAP Help Portal: Global Registration Flow.

Creatling a Global Site

Screenshot of Create Site dialog, which allows you to select a data center from US, EU, AU, and/or CN. Once these have been selected, select a primary location (which can't be CN).

Before creating your global site, it’s essential to determine which data centers to include and which one to designate as the primary. If the site is to be part of a site group, all sites in the site group must share the same data centers and the same primary data center (identical data center configuration).

To create a global site:

Enter the Site Domain
Select Global Data Center for Data Residency
Select the data centers to be included in the site

The primary data center should be the one that holds the majority of the user database and traffic for this global site or site group.

Global Site Groups

Global Site Groups offer a way to manage multiple sites in a group across different data centers. Key features include:

Can contain sites from any of the SAP Customer Data Cloud data centers
Can belong to more than one data center
Allows users to log in to all the sites in the group from different locations
Can provide global users with a single sign-on experience
All sites in a global site group must share the same data centers and the same primary data center

Unsupported Features

As of May 2026, the following features are not supported with Global Access:

Data Store
Flow Builder
Subscriptions / Lite Accounts (legacy)
Limited social provider support: Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and WeChat are supported. Amazon, PaypalOAuth, Sina Weibo, Yahoo, and Yahoo JAPAN are not.
CIAM for B2B (Organization Management)

For more information refer to the Feature Support documentation in the SAP Help Portal.

Summary

In this lesson, you learned that:

Global Access ensures a consistent user experience across different geographical locations by allowing users to log in to their existing accounts on localized sites.
Site configurations are replicated across all data centers, while user data remains in the data center where the account was created, adhering to data residency regulations.

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