Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash
This month I finally tackled one of the most confusing parts of being a Salesforce Admin: data access.
Between Profiles, Roles, Org-Wide Defaults (OWDs), Sharing Rules, and Manual Sharing, it’s a lot to wrap your head around. But once I mapped it out, things started to make sense.
Here’s how I’m thinking about it:
OWDs set the baseline for each object
Roles and role hierarchy expand visibility
Sharing Rules add exceptions
Manual Sharing handles one-off cases
I tested all of this by creating a test user with zero access, then slowly layering on permissions and watching what changed. It was the best way to learn.
Still not 100% confident—but way closer than I was a month ago.
