How permissions and sharing work on Salesforce

The Salesforce Platform has two main ways of controlling access to records—permissions and sharing. They are often confused for one another but have very different roles in managing access to data. Permissions in Salesforce focus on what you can do with a particular object in general; think of them as akin to a keycard that lets you access different levels of a building.

Sharing focuses on which records you can see for that object based on their ownership. This is like the different rooms our keycard can open on the floors we have access to. If our building were a corporate office block, then as a member of the IT team, we may have access to each floor (permission for each object) and the ability to look at everyone’s desk. The CEO may have access to every floor but not to the server room in the basement for security and safety reasons.

With Salesforce’s permissions and sharing tools, you can build up a very...