External group user sees fewer media than before

💻 Environment/Context

• External groups
• Media access

❓ Issue/Question

• From the Home tab, when I filter by photo, only about 2000 photos appear, while our entire archive has many more
• A user in an external group reports that far fewer media are visible than before, for example a few thousand photos when the archive holds many times that. The drop is recent and the user has not changed anything on their side

👌 Resolution/Answer

• First, follow External group user does not see the media
• If that doesn’t solve it, check the operator of the rule group
  • Open the external group and go to the Rules tab
  • Check the operator dropdown at the top of the rule group
  • If it’s set to OR and the group only has exclusion rules, change it to AND
  • Save, then ask the user to refresh the page

🥚 Cause

• Each exclusion rule (!=) is a condition the media must meet, e.g. “doesn’t have tag A”, “doesn’t have tag B”
  • AND needs all of them, so media is only visible when it has none of the excluded tags
  • OR needs only one, so media with tag A still passes because it doesn’t have tag B, and no tag is reliably blocked
• A rule group made only of exclusion rules needs AND. When it’s switched to OR, the group can lose access to most of the library

🔖 Notes

• To manage the external group, you need the External groups > Can edit permission
• Account Type Permissions Overview
• User can't see media
• External group doesn't see media with specific tag