What Isn't a Record, and Who Decides Who Sees It

Module 1 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: For data in Salesforce that isn’t a record, who decides who sees it?

Chapters 5 to 11 were about one kind of cabinet: records. Can this user open this account, this case, this apple? Twenty-five ways answer that, and most of them write a row in a share table.

But walk around the office. There’s more in it than record cabinets. There are files in drawers, reports in folders, articles on a shelf, a calendar on the wall, and a big archive in the basement. Each of them has its own lock, and most of those locks aren’t the share table. Chapter 5 listed them at the end (Beyond the record). This chapter opens each one.

Two questions for every cabinet

For a record, there’s one question: can this user open it? For the other cabinets, ask two.

Who can open the container? A file, a report folder, a list view, a Knowledge article. Each has its own way of saying who may open it.

Whose access decides what’s inside? Sometimes it’s the viewer’s own access to records. Sometimes it’s someone else’s. And sometimes there’s no record sharing at all.

Here’s why it matters. Take a report. In my class I put it simply: you share the folder that it’s in. You can share the folder with a public group, and you choose whether they’re a viewer, an editor or a manager. That answers the first question. Salesforce lets you share a report or dashboard folder “with users, groups, roles, or territories” (Share a Lightning Report or Dashboard Folder (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07).

But opening the folder doesn’t show you every record in the report. The report still shows only the records you can see. Now put the same report on a dashboard. “A static dashboard displays data using the configured user’s privileges. A dynamic dashboard displays data based on the logged-in user” (Control Dashboard Data Visibility (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). Same folder, same report, and a different answer to the second question.

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Four kinds of cabinet

Ask the second question of every cabinet in this chapter, and the answers fall into four kinds.

Follows record sharing

List views, reports and dynamic dashboards show the viewer their own records. Salesforce says it plainly for list views: “In list views, you see only the data that you have access to. You see records that you own or have read or write access to, and records shared with you” (Create a Custom List View in Lightning Experience (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). The list view itself is shared separately, with groups or roles. So the container has its own lock, but the contents follow everything chapters 5 to 11 built. Module 4 covers reports; chapter 7 covers list views (Sharing a List View Doesn’t Share the Records).

A model of its own

Files have their own sharing, and it isn’t the share table. In my class I asked it as three choices: who can see my files if I make them private, privately shared, or everyone in my company? Those are Salesforce’s three settings: “Your files in Salesforce can be private to you, privately shared, or visible to your entire company” (Who Can See My File? (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). A file is privately shared when it’s shared with specific people, a private group, or by a link, or posted to a record’s feed.

And there’s one rule that surprises people. Users with Modify All Data can see files they don’t own, “However, if the file is in a private library, then only the file owner has access to it” (same page). Here, even a user with Modify All Data is locked out.

Chatter groups work the same way for the files posted to them. “If the file is shared with a private group, only members of the group can find or view the file” (same page). A file posted to a public group is visible to the company. Modules 2 and 3.

Knowledge uses data categories by default, way 15. “Although they are standard objects, articles and questions do not have organization-wide defaults, sharing rules, or manual record sharing.” Visibility comes from the user’s “role, permission set, or profile” (How Category Visibility Differs from Other Salesforce Models (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). Since Summer ‘20, Lightning Knowledge can use standard sharing instead. Module 5.

Calendars have calendar sharing, way 12. Admins set org-wide calendar sharing levels, but each user decides who sees the details of their own events (Set 3, By Hand). Module 6.

Someone else’s access

This is the kind that leaks.

A static dashboard shows everyone who opens it what its running user can see. If the running user is a vice president, everyone with access to the folder sees the vice president’s totals. Module 4.

CRM Analytics is the same idea, bigger. It loads Salesforce data into its own datasets, using an internal user: “Because the Integration User has View All Data access, consider restricting access to particular objects and fields that contain sensitive data” (Salesforce Data Access in CRM Analytics (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). So the dataset starts with everything. Who sees which rows is up to the row-level security you add. Module 7.

Permissions only

Big objects hold billions of rows, and they skip sharing entirely. “Big objects support only object and field permissions, not regular or standard sharing rules” (Big Objects (opens in a new tab), Big Objects Implementation Guide, checked 2026-11-07). If a user can read the object, they can read every row.

External objects show data that lives in another system. Restriction rules can narrow them: they’re one of the few objects Salesforce lists for restriction rules (Set 6, Taking Access Away). Module 8.

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Where a good sharing model gets walked around

The first kind is the easy one. If your record sharing is right, list views and reports are right too.

The other three are where a good sharing model gets walked around. A user who can’t open an account can still see a contract file someone shared with the whole company. A user who can’t see the West region’s opportunities can still see their total on a dashboard that runs as the sales vice president. A user with read access to a big object sees every row in it, because there’s no sharing to stop them.

None of those is a bug. Each cabinet does what it was built to do. The architect’s job is to know which kind each cabinet is, and to decide on purpose who opens it.

The path through this chapter

1. The other cabinets (this module).
2. Files: owners, records, libraries, file privacy and public links.
3. Chatter groups and the files shared to them.
4. Folders: report, dashboard, email template and document folders, and the running user.
5. Knowledge: data categories and channels.
6. Calendars and events.
7. CRM Analytics row-level security.
8. Big objects and external objects.

List views aren’t here: chapter 7 covers them, in Sharing a List View Doesn’t Share the Records.

Test knowledge. Know that Knowledge articles don’t use org-wide defaults or sharing rules by default, and that their visibility comes from data categories, by role, permission set or profile. Know that a static dashboard shows its running user’s data to everyone who opens it, and a dynamic dashboard shows each viewer their own. Know that big objects support only object and field permissions. A likely area, not a known question.

What an architect decides here

• For each kind of data in the org that isn’t a record, which of the four kinds it is.
• Who may open each container: each file library, report and dashboard folder, list view and data category.
• Every place where someone else’s access decides what a viewer sees: each static dashboard’s running user, and each CRM Analytics dataset’s row-level security.
• Which big objects hold data that only some users may read, since object permissions are all there is.
• Who reviews these cabinets, since none of them shows up when you query the share table.

Beyond the exam: what AI changes. An agent runs as a user, so it opens every cabinet that user can open. It can find a file shared with the whole company, read Knowledge articles in its categories, and summarize a dashboard that runs as someone more senior. Before an agent gets access to files, Knowledge or analytics, ask the two questions for each one. Chapter 20 covers agents.

Explore

• Who Can See My File? (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
• Share a Lightning Report or Dashboard Folder (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
• Control Dashboard Data Visibility (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
• Create a Custom List View in Lightning Experience (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
• How Category Visibility Differs from Other Salesforce Models (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
• Salesforce Data Access in CRM Analytics (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
• Big Objects (opens in a new tab), Big Objects Implementation Guide (checked 2026-11-07)