An organization using Salesforce has plenty of data stored in the system. Some of the org’s users will need access to the same kinds of data at some point as they work. Meanwhile, there will also be times when access to data needs to be controlled and kept to a minimum. Because of this, Salesforce included Sharing Settings to make data access control easier and safer.
Why Sharing Settings Is Important
Data contained in a Salesforce organization is highly sensitive and should only be used for the purpose it is accorded for. Employees working for a company that uses Salesforce have different levels of job descriptions; not all of them will need to access a particular piece of data for the same purposes.
Sharing Settings is important to protect the integrity, security, and privacy of sensitive organization data. Only the needed information is presented to each org member, avoiding that overwhelming feeling of having so much data that needs to be filtered out in order to effectively work.
How Does Sharing Settings Work?
Access to data in Salesforce can be controlled at various levels using Sharing Settings. Here are some examples of Sharing Settings that admins can utilize:
- Apex-managed sharing – Used in a programmatic way for custom objects access
- Queues – Used by teams who have shared workloads. Queues can route object records such as custom, lead, case, and order to a particular group.
- Category groups being mapped to Roles – Data categories can be mapped to user roles to help control access to them.
Default Sharing Settings
Salesforce enforces an organization-wide default sharing setting to give each object a baseline level of security and access. It is up to the administrators on how they will apply hierarchy and sharing rules to these objects.
Should they need to continue with the records being shared as Public Read Only by default, or should they restrict access to Private for select individuals only? That will depend on their needs and situations.
The need for higher-than-the-default access levels will also be determined by the need to use that object in a project and how that object will affect the outcome of an org member’s work.
Summary
Sharing Settings are important to keep objects, records, and any other Salesforce data safe and secured in the hands of those people who really need it for their organization’s work. Admins can restrict or grant access to certain data through the use of Apex, queues, and mapping of category groups to roles.