Sharing Architecture
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A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Salesforce Spring
salesforcedocs
Last updated November
Copyright Salesforce Inc All rights reserved Salesforce is a registered trademark of Salesforce Inc as are other
names and marks Other marks appearing herein may be trademarks of their respective owners
CONTENTS
A GUIDE TO SHARING ARCHITECTURE
Introduction
Types of Data Access
Customer Implementation Scenarios
Considerations
Troubleshooting
A GUIDE TO SHARING ARCHITECTURE
Introduction
The Salesforce sharing model is an essential element in your organizations ability to provide secure application data access Therefore
its crucial to architect your sharing model correctly to meet your current and future data access requirements In this document well
review data accessibility components sharing model use cases and real customer sharing solutions and well provide some troubleshooting
guidelines
Intended Audience and Prerequisites
This document is intended for advanced system administrators and architects To understand the concepts you must have a working
knowledge of the Salesforce security and sharing model Prerequisites to this guide are
Salesforce Security Guide
Trailhead Module Data Security
Data Access Not Covered
The topics not covered in Data Accessibility Architecture
Folder access
Content access
Chatter access
Knowledge Base access
Ideas QuestionsAnswers access
Salesforce to Salesforce
Mobile data accessibility
Types of Data Access
Recordlevel security lets you give users access to some object records but not others As with most applications data access begins
with a user The application must know who the user is before it provides access For Salesforce there are different types of users and
sometimes the level of access is different by type Instead of reviewing every attribute of every license type well focus here on the
interesting attributes that have significant impact on data access Record ownership and full access are synonymous and interchangeable
and provide the user with the highest level of access to a record
Users and Licenses
HighVolume Users
Highvolume users including users with the Customer Community High Volume Customer Portal and Authenticated Website
license types dont utilize the sharing model because their license types dont support roles These licenses have their own sharing
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Types of Data Access
model that works by foreign key match between the user holding the license and the data on Account and Contact lookups
Admins can create sharing sets or share groups to grant highvolume users access to records
Chatter Free and Chatter External Licenses
The Chatter Free and Chatter External licenses dont follow the standard sharing model These licenses dont have access to CRM
records standard or custom objects and Content functionality and dont support roles therefore there is no sharing
For the remainder of this document we are assuming a Salesforce user type utilizing a full sharing model See User Licenses for more
information about each available license type
Components
Profiles and Permission Sets
Profiles and permission sets provide objectlevel security by determining what types of data users see and whether they can edit
create or delete records For each object the View All and Modify All permissions ignore sharing rules and settings allowing
administrators to quickly grant access to records associated with a given object across the organization These permissions are often
preferable alternatives to the View All Data and Modify All Data administrative permissions
Profiles and permission sets also control fieldlevel security which determines the fields within every object that users can access
For example an object can have fields but fieldlevel security can be set up to prevent the users from seeing five of the fields
Record Ownership and Queues
Every record must be owned by a single user or a queue The owner has access to the record based on the Object Settings for the
owners profile For example if the owners profile has Create and Read permission on an object but not Edit or Delete
permission the owner can create a record for the object and see the new record However the owner wont be able to edit or delete
the record Users higher in a hierarchy role or territory inherit the same data access as their subordinates for standard objects
Managers gain as much access as their subordinates If the subordinate has readonly access so will the manager This access applies
to records owned by users as well as records shared with them
Queues help you prioritize distribute and assign records to teams who share workloads Queue members and users higher in a role
hierarchy can access queues from list views and take ownership of records in a queue
If a single user owns more than records as a best practice
The user record of the owner should not hold a role in the role hierarchy
If the owners user record must hold a role put the role at the top of the hierarchy in its own branch of the role hierarchy
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Types of Data Access
OrganizationWide Defaults
Organizationwide sharing settings specify the default level of access that users have to each others records You use organizationwide
sharing settings to lock your data to the most restrictive level Use the other recordlevel security and sharing tools to selectively
give access to other users For example users have objectlevel permissions to read and edit opportunities and the organizationwide
sharing setting is ReadOnly By default those users can read all opportunity records but cant edit any unless they own the record
or are granted other permissions Organizationwide defaults are the only way to restrict user access to a record
Organizationwide default settings can be changed from one setting to another private to controlled by parent
then back to private however these changes require sharing recalculation and depending on volume could result in long
processing times
For custom objects only use the Grant Access Using Hierarchies setting which if unchecked default is checked prevents managers
from inheriting access This setting is found in the organizationwide default settings
Role Hierarchy
A role hierarchy represents a level of data access that a user or group of users needs The role hierarchy ensures that managers always
have access to the same data as their employees regardless of the organizationwide default settings Role hierarchies dont have
to match your organization chart exactly Instead each role in the hierarchy should represent a level of data access that a user or
group of users needs
An organization is allowed roles however this number can be increased by Salesforce As a best practice keep the number of
internal roles to and the number of external roles to
As a best practice keep the role hierarchy to no more than levels of branches in the hierarchy
When a users role changes any relevant sharing rules are evaluated to correct access as necessary Peers within the same role dont
guarantee them access to each others data
Modeling the role hierarchy begins with understanding how the organization is structured This is usually built from understanding
a managers scope starting from the top The CEO oversees the entire company The CEO usually has direct reports that can then
be segmented by Business Unit Sales or Support or geographical region EMEA APAC That person then has direct reports that
could be further segmented and so on Although this sounds very much like an HR organizational chart when modeling data access
focus on data accessibility with a consideration to HR reporting
Overlays are always the tricky part of the hierarchy If theyre in their own branch theyll require either sharing rules teams or territory
management to gain needed access If they are folded into the hierarchy there might be reporting implications
Its important to spend the time setting up the role hierarchy because its the foundation for the entire sharing model
Role Hierarchy Use Cases
Management access the ability for managers to be able to see and do whatever their subordinates can see and do
Management reporting the ability for reporting to roll up in a hierarchical fashion so that anyone higher in the hierarchy sees
more data than those below them
Segregation between organizational branches different business units dont need to see each others data having a hierarchy
in which you can define separate branches allows you to segregate visibility within business units while still rolling visibility up to
the executive levels above those units
Segregation within a role in many organizationsapplications people who all play the same role should not necessarily see each
others data Having hierarchical roles allows you to define a leaf node in which all data is essentially private and still roll that
data up to a parent role that can see all
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Types of Data Access
Public Groups
A public group not a Chatter group is a collection of individual users roles territories and so on that all have a function in common
Public groups can consist of
Users
Customer Portal Users
Partner Users
Roles
Roles and Internal Subordinates
Roles Internal and Portal Subordinates
Portal Roles
Portal Roles and Subordinates
Territories
Territories and Subordinates
Other public groups nesting
Groups can be nested Group A nested into Group B but dont nest more than five levels Nesting has an impact on group maintenance
and performance due to group membership calculation As a best practice keep the total number of public groups for an organization
to
Public Groups Use Cases
When you need to provide access to an arbitrary group of people you create a public group to collect them and then use other
sharing tools to give the group the necessary access Group membership alone doesnt provide data access
Groups can also be nested inside each other therefore allowing a nested group to gain the same access as the group in which it
is contained This allows the creation of smaller adhoc hierarchies that dont necessarily interact with the role or territory hierarchies
If Group A is a member of Group B then the members of Group A will have access to data shared to Group B at the same access
level as the members of Group B
Groups also have the ability to protect data shared in the group from being made accessible to people in the role hierarchy above
the group members This and dealing with the access of record owners and their management hierarchy allows the creation of
groups in which very highly confidential information can be sharedthe data will be accessible ONLY to group members and
nobody else in the organization This is accomplished by using the Grant Access Using Hierarchies setting
OwnerBased Sharing Rules
Ownerbased sharing rules allow for exceptions to organizationwide default settings and the role hierarchy that give additional
users access to records they dont own Ownerbased sharing rules are based on the record owner only
Contact ownerbased sharing rules dont apply to private contacts
The limit of ownerbased sharing rules per object is
OwnerBased Sharing Rule Use Cases
Rolebased matrix management or overlay situations a person in Service must be able to see some Sales data but they live in
different branches of the hierarchy so you can create a rule that shares data between roles on different branches
To provide data access to peers who hold the same role or territory
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Types of Data Access
OwnerBased Sharing Rule Use Cases
To provide data access to other groupings of users public groups portal roles territories The members of the groupings who
own the records can be shared with the members of other groupings
CriteriaBased Sharing Rules
Criteriabased sharing rules provide access to records based on the records field values criteria If the criteria are met one or many
field values then a share record is created for the rule Record ownership is not a consideration
The limit of criteriabased and guest user sharing rules per object is
CriteriaBased Sharing Rule Use Case
To provide data access to users or groups based on the value of a field on the record
Guest User Sharing Rules
A guest user sharing rule is a special type of criteriabased sharing rule used to grant record access to unauthenticated guest users
The limit of criteriabased and guest user sharing rules per object is
Warning The guest user sharing rule type grants access to guest users without login credentials By creating a guest user
sharing rule youre allowing immediate and unlimited access to all records matching the sharing rules criteria to anyone To
secure your Salesforce data and give your guest users access to what they need consider all the use cases and implications
of creating this type of sharing rule Implement security controls that you think are appropriate for the sensitivity of your data
Salesforce is not responsible for any exposure of your data to unauthenticated users based on this change from default settings
Guest User Sharing Rule Use Case
To provide data access to unauthenticated guest users
Manual Sharing
Sometimes its impossible to define a consistent group of users who need access to a particular set of records Record owners can
use manual sharing to give read and edit permissions to users who dont have access any other way Manual sharing isnt automated
like organizationwide sharing settings role hierarchies or sharing rules But it gives record owners the flexibility to share records
with users that must see them Manual sharing is available only in Salesforce Classic
Manual sharing is removed when the record owner changes or when the sharing access granted doesnt grant additional access
beyond the objects organizationwide sharing default access level This also applies to manual shares created programmatically
Only manual share records can be created on standard objects Manual share records are defined as share records with the row
cause set to manual share
All share records standard and custom objects with a row cause set to manual share can be edited and deleted by the Share button
on the objects page layout even if the share record was created programmatically
Manual Sharing Use Case
To provide the user with the ability to give access read only or readwrite to the current record to other users groups or roles
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Types of Data Access
Teams
A team is a group of users that work together on an account sales opportunity or case Record owners can build a team for each
record that they own The record owner adds team members and specifies the access level each team member has to the record
Some team members can have readonly access while others have readwrite
Only owners people higher in the hierarchy and administrators can add team members and provide more access to the member
A team member with readwrite access can add another member who already has access to the record with which the team is
associated The team member cant provide them additional access
Creating a team member in the app creates two records a team record and an associated share record If you create team members
programmatically you have to manage both the team record and associated share record There is only one team per record Account
Opportunity or Case If multiple teams are needed depending on your specific needs consider territory management or programmatic
sharing
Teams Account and Opportunity Use Cases
To provide the user with the ability to give access readonly or readwrite to a single group of users the team
If teams are managed externally say through an external commission or territory management system then integration can be
used to manage the account team There are cases when territory management in an external system can align to a team solution
within Salesforce
Multiple owners of an account can be managed by the account team
A single group of users team require either readonly or readwrite access to an opportunity record Opportunity Team
Territory Hierarchy
When using Enterprise Territory Management you set up a territory hierarchy that shows a models territory structure and serves as
its main interaction point If Enterprise Territory Management is enabled you must manage both the role hierarchy and territory
hierarchy
Programmatic Sharing
Programmatic sharing formally Apexmanaged sharing allows you to use code Apex or other to build sophisticated and dynamic
sharing settings when a data access requirement cannot be met by any other means
If you create a share record programmatically and the outofbox row cause manual share is used then you can maintain this share
record with the Share button in the app The share record is subject to all rules with the manual share row cause such as deletion
upon owner transfer
Review Sharing a Record Using Apex before you consider using programmatic sharing
Programmatic Sharing Use Cases
No other method of sharing declarative meets the data access needs
There is an existing external system of truth for user access assignments which will continue to drive access and be integrated
with Salesforce
Poor performance by using native sharing components Usually applies to very large data volumes
Team functionality on custom objects
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Customer Implementation Scenarios
Implicit Sharing
Implicit sharing is automatic You can neither turn it off nor turn it onit is native to the application In other words implicit sharing
isnt a configurable setting however its important for any architect to understand Parent implicit sharing is providing access to
parent records account only when a user has access to children opportunities cases or contacts for that account Salesforce has a
data access policy that states if a user can see a contact or opportunity case or order then the user implicitly sees the associated
account Child implicit sharing is providing access to an accounts child records to the account owner This access is defined at the
owners role in the role hierarchy Child implicit sharing only applies to contact opportunity and case objects children of the account
The access levels that can be provided are View Edit and No access for each of the children objects when the role is created By
setting to View the account owner can implicitly see the associated object records contact opportunity or case By setting to Edit
the account owner can implicitly modify the associated object contact opportunity or case
Implicit sharing doesnt apply to custom objects
Customer Implementation Scenarios
There isnt a sharing model that fits all Salesforce orgs Every org has different requirements and challenges when trying to architect the
best sharing model Its crucial to use the most appropriate data access components to fit the sharing requirements of the org The
following scenarios are common challenges when trying to architect a sharing model
Customer Scenario Team Assignment Managed Externally via Customer
Master System
Requirements or Challenges
Solution
Two in a box a sales manager of one geographic coverage area
also wants access to another geographic coverage area in order
to assist
Ownerbased sharing rule An ownerbased sharing rule works
here because these are edge cases and not the norm It is also
acceptable if the ownerbased sharing rule provides more access
than is truly necessary because this is a manager a trusted
individual
Countrybased operations users need access to all country sales
data
Ownerbased sharing rule A very common use of a sharing rule is
when a different department other than sales needs access to
sales data
At least of the time there is a core team on an account
Account Executive Inside Sales Rep Sales Consultant Technical
Sales Rep The system of record for the account team assignment
is external There is always only one team to an account
Teams Account and Opportunity Since there is always only one
team per account even if there are many different members with
different roles the account team functionality satisfies this
requirement
Managers of the team must have the same access as their
subordinates
Role hierarchy The role hierarchy solves this requirement by
allowing managers to have access to the data of their subordinates
The assigned account team must not be modifiable
Teams Account and Opportunity This requirement is not actually
accomplished with the account team functionality However it
also shouldnt prevent you from still using account teams There
are multiple ways of locking down the teams however For this
case removing the account team page layout is used
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Customer Scenario OutofBox Territory Management
Requirements or Challenges
Solution
There must be buddy functionality so that when someone is sick Teams Account and Opportunity A buddy can simply be a role
or on vacation someone without standard access to an account on the team that accomplishes this requirement However the
or opportunity can be accessed and covered during the time off challenge comes from the previous requirement where Teams
must not be modifiable The only solution is to have a set group
of people who can modify teams to create the buddy role when
necessary
When a deal requires a custom solution additional people who Teams Account and Opportunity A pretty standard usage of the
are not necessarily in the sales organization must have access to Opportunity Team accomplished by manually adding a new
the deal
member to the Opportunity Team via related list Can also be
accomplished via a trigger if you always know who should be
added In this case it is opportunity by opportunity
Customer Scenario OutofBox Territory Management
Requirements or Challenges
Solution
Two different opportunity teams from two distinct business units
Retails Sales and Remarketing need access to the same account
record They must share contacts and be aware of all activities on
the account These two business units have their own hierarchy
and rollups
Territory management The best way to think of this requirement
is having two branches of a hierarchy that may be structured
differently What justifies territory management is that there are
two levels of these two different branches both levels with
members the opportunity team for that business unit who need
access to the account Although you could have accomplished this
requirement with a Teaming concept that was too granular The
sales segmentation was not at an account level but in a hierarchy
There is a separate group of business developers who are assigned
and need access to specific accounts for a specific opportunity
team a territory The business developers are shared resources
for the opportunity teams which mean each business developer
may be assigned to one or more accounts for one or more
opportunity teams
Territory management Because this is a group of users or a team
and each business development team could be different by
account and since territory management was needed for another
reason then the likely best approach is to build out subterritories
or separate branches that represent these business development
teams
There are noncommission based sales supporting roles who need Teams Account and Opportunity The key portion of the
access to accounts on a oneoff basis
requirement is oneoff basis This means it is done on an account
by account basis so account teams provide that natively
The credit department needs access to all accounts for a given
business unit
Ownerbased sharing rule This is a situation where across the
board for a given business unit a group of users must see
everything This requirement could be accomplished with a sharing
rule for a role the group belongs to a branch of the role hierarchy
the group belongs to role and subordinates or even a public
group
Territory management You could also accomplish this requirement
by modeling the credit department as a territory with the same
logic for the given business unit
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Considerations
Requirements or Challenges
Solution
Managers must have the same access as their subordinates
Role hierarchy The role hierarchy solves this requirement by
allowing managers to have access to the data of their subordinates
Considerations
Enterprise Territory Management Implementation Considerations
What Happens to the Role Hierarchy
Nothing happens to the role hierarchy if youre also using a territory hierarchy However if youre using both territorybased forecasting
and rolebased forecasting together you must manage two hierarchies In this case we recommend that you use the role hierarchy
to model the HR reporting structure then use the territory hierarchy to model the actual sales hierarchy The territory hierarchy is
best for modeling a matrix reporting structure where someone can report to multiple managers
If youre not using territorybased forecasting and rolebased forecasting together its possible to use only the territory hierarchy as
the sales hierarchy In this scenario its best to simplify or flatten the hierarchy as much as possible
We dont recommend making the role hierarchy and territory hierarchy identical because it causes unnecessary sharing activity
Can You Still Use Teams
Yes However if you can satisfy your access requirements within the territory hierarchy like overlays its better to do it there than
to use teams Youre already maintaining multiple hierarchies role and territory so in trying to keep things as simple as possible
only implement teams if no other existing sharing component will satisfy the requirement
Other Considerations
Realignment and Reassignment
There are two types of changes that occur the membership of roles teams or territories and the structure of the hierarchy
Membership changes can typically occur daily even hourly Hierarchy structural realignments changes generally occur less often
quarterly semiannually or annually and can be resource expensive What must be considered are the volume of changes and the
number of cascading changes that each change will cause As a rule of thumb have structural changes occur no more than quarterly
and all changes of high volume bulk or mass changes be well planned tested and coordinated
Large Data Volumes
Whether youre modeling for the initial rollout or planning a realignment change you must make some serious consideration to the
volume of data There are thresholds where performance can become a factor so testing out your changes in a sandbox is highly
recommended before production This testing will also give you a baseline for how long the change will take
If you have more than two million accounts and have implemented teams or Enterprise Territory Management you especially must
pay attention to performance These are complex sharing model components that can make for a huge volume of share records
and hence long running transactions
Defer Sharing Calculations
If you have an object that utilizes sharing and has a large volume of records such as more than two million accounts and you must
make a bulk change such as a quarterly realignment requiring a hierarchy change then theres a feature that Salesforce Support
can enable to defer automatic sharing calculations Natively every individual change to the role hierarchy territory hierarchy groups
sharing rules user roles team membership or ownership of records can initiate automatic sharing calculations When a bulk change
is made it causes a number of automatic sharing recalculations to begin By suspending these recalculations temporarily you are
able to make the change and then have sharing calculations happen all at once This method is typically more efficient and better
performing for bulk changes
A Guide to Sharing Architecture
Troubleshooting
Data and Ownership Skews
Data skews are defined as a few parent records with many children records These skews can really hurt you when a few accounts
have many contacts opportunities or cases The ratio where we start seeing performance degradation is As a best practice
keep the ratio as close to that as possible lower is preferred
Ownership skews are similar to data skews except were referring to a single user role or group owning many records for an object
As with data skews these can also cause long running transactions causing a performance degradation when change occurs The
recommended ratio of owner to number of records is also
If a single user owns more than records as a best practice
The user record of the owner should not hold a role in the role hierarchy
If the owners user record must hold a role put the role at the top of the hierarchy in its own branch of the role hierarchy
Account Hierarchies Impact on Data Access
A lot of people make a bad assumption when they implement an account hierarchy They assume the users who can access a parent
account can also access the children accounts The simple fact of only having a parentchild relationship between two records
doesnt drive access Although the role hierarchy and the territory hierarchy do work in this way the account hierarchy doesnt
Troubleshooting
Once you have completed your sharing model architecture you will likely be challenged with why a user can or cant see a record
Typically you wont hear when users can see something they shouldnt but if necessary there is a way to see every user who has access
to a record and why
The more difficult challenge and probably more common is why a user cant see a record The security layers that you have architected
determine where you start If you know the sharing model well then you will probably know what component should have provided
the access and can start there But if you are less familiar with the sharing model start with the role hierarchy and peel back each layer
to determine which one should provide the access Here is a troubleshooting flow
Verify that the user has permissions to access the object
Identify the users role who cant see the record and note it
Identify the owner of the records role and note it
Review the role hierarchy and verify that these two roles are in two different branches they should be
Now you must review the sharing rules for the object and make sure that there is no rule that grants the user access If needed look
in public groups as well Maybe the user was left out of a group where there is a sharing rule or it makes sense to create a new
sharing rule to grant the user access This choice depends on the architecture you are trying to maintain and applies to both
ownerbased sharing rules and criteriabased sharing rules
If youre using teams should this user be on the team for that record How are teams maintained and how did the miss occur
If manual sharing is used the user may have lost access because the record owner changed Manual shares are dropped when
ownership changes The manual share could also have been removed using the Share button
If youre using Enterprise Territory Management is the user missing from one of the territories Where is the membership of territories
maintained and how did the miss occur Or maybe the record didnt get assigned to the territory where the user is a member
If youre creating programmatic shares and there are criteria for creating the share in code review the code to understand why this
user was omitted
