Public, Private and Unlisted, and the Files Shared to Them

Module 3 of 8 in the chapter Files, Folders, Reports and Other Data, chapter 12 of Securing Salesforce: Sharing and Visibility. Each module stands on its own.

The question this module answers: Who can see what’s posted in a Chatter group, and the files shared there?

Salesforce has two things called a group, and people mix them up all the time. A public group is a bucket for sharing: you point a sharing rule or a share at it, and its members get records. In chapter 5 I called it a Swiss Army knife (Set 2, Sharing Rules). A Chatter group is something else entirely. It’s a place where a team talks: a feed, posts, comments and files.

A Chatter group doesn’t share records. But it does share everything posted to it, files included. So for this chapter, it’s one more cabinet.

Three kinds of Chatter group

Salesforce describes it this way: “Chatter groups can be public, private, unlisted, and archived” (Chatter Groups (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). Archived only stops new posts. The other three decide who sees what.

Click to enlarge

Public

“Anyone can see and add posts, comments, and files. Anyone can join a public group” (Chatter Groups). And module 2’s rule follows: a file posted to a public group is shared with your company. Post a file there, and everyone in the company can find it.

Private

“Only group members can see and add posts, comments, and files.” Others can still see the outline: the unlisted page puts it as “a truncated version of the detail page,” showing “the name, description, and member list, but not the feed or files.” To join, “People must ask the group’s owner or managers.” And the overrides reach in: “Users with the ‘Modify All Data’ and ‘View All Data’ permission can see group posts, updates, and files across the organization” (Chatter Groups).

Unlisted

This is the private one. “For nonmembers, unlisted groups don’t appear in list views, feeds, and search results. Only members and users with the Manage Unlisted Groups permission can find and access unlisted groups.” Nobody can ask to join; the owner or a manager invites them (Unlisted Chatter Groups (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07).

And here’s the twist, the same one as the private library in module 2. “Users with Modify All Data or View All Data permission can’t access an unlisted group or its files unless they’re members of the group.” Only one permission gets past it: “Only users with the Manage Unlisted Groups permission can access or modify an unlisted group and its files and feed content without membership” (same page).

So if you’re asked who holds the keys to an unlisted group, the answer isn’t the users with View All Data. It’s whoever has Manage Unlisted Groups. Keep that list short.

Where a group lets a file out

Three things to watch.

A file is shared to wherever it’s posted. The file’s own sharing, from module 2, follows the group. Posted to a public group, the file is company-wide. Posted to a private or unlisted group, it’s shared with the members. Unlisted adds one caution: “If the file is shared outside the unlisted group, then other users with permissions can update the file” (Unlisted Chatter Groups). The group only protects the copy that stays in the group.

Groups can include customers. “Private and unlisted groups can allow customers” (Chatter Groups). A group with customers in it is a group where outsiders read the feed. Salesforce marks those groups, in Lightning Experience with “a caption in the group header.” Before posting an internal file to a group, look for it.

Code and other apps can see more than the screen. Salesforce warns: “Custom pages or third-party applications that are integrated with Salesforce can expose unlisted group information to users who don’t have access via the Salesforce UI” (Unlisted Chatter Groups). That’s the lesson about code in system mode from Set 5, showing up in a feed. Chapter 17 goes deep.

How many groups

One number, because it comes up. “You can join up to 300 groups, and your company can have a total of 30,000 groups” (Chatter Groups). That’s 300 Chatter groups per user. It isn’t a limit on public groups, the sharing buckets.

Test knowledge. Know the three kinds of Chatter group: public, where anyone sees posts and files; private, members only, though View All Data and Modify All Data see them; and unlisted, hidden even from users with View All Data unless they’re members, with Manage Unlisted Groups the only way in without membership. Know that a Chatter group isn’t a public group. A likely area, not a known question.

What an architect decides here

• Which teams need private or unlisted groups, and whether unlisted groups are turned on.
• Who holds Manage Unlisted Groups, since it’s the only permission that opens every unlisted group.
• Which groups may include customers, and who checks before internal files are posted to them.
• Whether files that matter belong in a group at all, or in a library or on a record, where their access is clearer.
• Which custom pages and integrated apps read Chatter data, and whether they respect group membership.

Beyond the exam: what AI changes. An agent that reads feeds as its user sees every public group, and every private group that user is a member of. A summary of “what’s been said about this account” can pull in a file someone posted to a public group months ago. And an unlisted group is only as private as the code that reads it: an agent action that runs in system mode isn’t held back by membership on a screen. Check what each agent action reads before giving it access to Chatter. Chapter 20 covers agents.

Explore

• Chatter Groups (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
• Unlisted Chatter Groups (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)