One Record, Shared by Hand

Module 1 of 6 in the chapter Config-Based Sharing: Manual Shares, Teams and Territories, chapter 9 of Securing Salesforce: Sharing and Visibility. Each module stands on its own.

The question this module answers: When one person needs one record that no rule covers, how do you share it by hand, who’s allowed to, and what happens to that share later?

Chapters 7 and 8 opened records by rule: every record that matches, every record a team owns. But some needs are one record. A coworker is covering a case while its owner is away. A specialist needs one opportunity for a week. No rule fits, and you wouldn’t want one.

That’s manual sharing. A particular record has an owner, and that owner grants access to a specific other user. Salesforce: “Manual sharing allows users to share individual records with other users, public groups, and roles,” and “Manual shares are used for one-off access exceptions, when sharing rules or other features can’t be used to grant the intended access” (Manual Sharing (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07).

Chapter 5, module 4 put it on the map as way 8, with my Workbench demo: one share, one row. This module is everything around that row.

Not everyone who can see a record can share it. You must be one of these (Manual Sharing):

The record owner.
A user in a role above the owner, “if your organization’s sharing settings control access through hierarchies.”
A user with Modify All Records on the object.
A Salesforce admin.

And one more, through the share itself: Full Access lets a user “view, edit, delete, and transfer the record,” and “also extend sharing access to other users. But the user can’t grant Full Access to other users” (Grant Access to Records with Manual Sharing in Lightning Experience (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). Whoever has full access can grant the share, in addition to the owner.

Who it can go to, and how much

You click Sharing on the record, search, and pick (Grant Access to Records with Manual Sharing in Lightning Experience):

Users. “All users in your org. Doesn’t include portal users.”
Public groups, roles, and roles and internal subordinates. Yes, a manual share can go to a group. Roles and Subordinates is deprecated here too, as in chapter 7.
Territories, and territories and subordinates, in the active territory model (module 3).
Managers groups and manager subordinates groups (chapter 7, module 1).

Then the level: Read Only, Read/Write, Full Access, or Private. Read Only lets the user “view the record, and add associated records to it,” but not edit it or add notes or attachments (same page).

Remember the hierarchy. If you’ve got Grant Access Using Hierarchies on, the access goes upward too: Salesforce’s own example shares one case with a coworker, which “opens up access to only the one case record for their coworker (and users above the coworker in the role hierarchy)” (same page).

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The account family

Accounts and their children have rules of their own (Manual Sharing Considerations (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07):

Sharing a child. “If you’re sharing an opportunity, contact, or case, the users you share it with must have at least Read access to the associated parent account via sharing features or you must have the ability to also share the account.” If you can share the account, the users “are automatically given Read access to the parent account.”
Sharing the account. “the access level for its child opportunities, cases, and contacts can’t be greater than the account owner’s default access from organization-wide defaults and the owner’s role,” unless you’re an admin or have Modify All Records on Account or Modify All Data.
Granting one grants more. “if you grant another user access to an account, the user automatically has access to all the opportunities and cases associated with that account” (Manual Sharing). Chapter 10 covers that.

Where it doesn’t work

Manual sharing isn’t everywhere (Manual Sharing Considerations):

“Experience Cloud sites and the Salesforce mobile app don’t support manual sharing in Lightning Experience.”
“You can’t manually share records owned by high-volume community or site users.”
“You can’t grant access to unauthenticated guest users with manual sharing” (chapter 7, module 3).
In Lightning Experience, sharing is available for custom objects and a listed set of standard objects, accounts, cases, contacts, leads and opportunities among them. Check the list for the object you mean.

Too many by hand

Manual shares are for exceptions. When they become the pattern, Salesforce draws a line: “we recommend that a user is the recipient of a maximum of 10,000 manual account shares. If you need to share a very large number of accounts with a user, consider creating a sharing rule instead” (Manual Sharing Considerations).

Long before 10,000, ask why people keep sharing the same kind of record with the same kind of person. If there’s a pattern, there’s a rule (chapters 7 and 8) or a team (module 2) waiting to replace it. A pattern of manual shares is a sharing model nobody designed.

Here’s the thing to remember about manual shares. By default, “if a record owner changes, Salesforce deletes any manual shares on the record, which can cause users to lose access” (Manual Sharing). In class I show it: share a record, change its owner, and the share is gone.

And it’s not only the record’s own owner. With the default setting (Manual Sharing Considerations):

“When account ownership is transferred, manual shares created by the original account owner on child records, such as opportunities and cases, are also deleted.”
“When the parent account for an opportunity or case changes, manual shares for the opportunity or case are deleted if the user making the change isn’t allowed to share the new parent account.” They’re kept if the new parent account’s owner, someone above them, or an admin made the change, or if the recipient already has access to the new parent account.
“When an opportunity is closed and the owner of the opportunity’s parent account changes, manual shares for the opportunity are deleted even when opportunity splits are enabled.”

Since Winter ‘27, you can choose. “Enable the ‘Keep manual shares when transferring records’ setting to retain manual shares when a record’s owner changes.” It’s on the Sharing Settings page, in the Organization-Wide Defaults area, and needs the Manage Sharing permission (Keep Manual Shares When Transferring Records (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07). It’s off by default, and it’s one setting for the whole org.

So it’s a design decision now. When the owner changes, should the people the old owner shared with keep the record? For a coworker covering a case, maybe not: the new owner may not even know they’re there. For a specialist the account always needs, maybe yes. Decide it once, for the org, and tell people which it is.

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Test it with three users

How do you know a manual share does what you meant? It takes three users to test things properly. One to own, one to share with, and then: what are the side effects? The third user is the one who shouldn’t see it, or who might see it through the hierarchy above the person you shared with. Chapter 13 covers testing.

Watch it on video

In 2023 I made a video of manual sharing and the three kinds of team, with a few lines of code that add a team member. The note under the video says what’s still right and what’s changed since.

Still right

Manual sharing: the owner, someone above them in the hierarchy, a user with full access or an admin can share one record with someone else, with the Sharing button on the record.
Account, opportunity and case teams each work a little differently. Account and opportunity teams can start from each user’s default team; case teams are predefined teams you add to a case.
A team member can be added by an automation, a flow or a few lines of code, and users still see and manage the team on the record’s own screens.

What’s changed

Manual shares can survive an owner change. The video says every manual share is removed when the owner changes. That’s still the default: “By default, when ownership of a record is transferred, Salesforce deletes manual shares on the record.” Since Winter ‘27, the Keep manual shares when transferring records setting keeps them (Keep Manual Shares When Transferring Records (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07).
Teams can be kept when the owner changes. When you change an account’s owner, “To keep account team members with an account when the owner changes, select Keep account team.” It “only applies to team members added by a Salesforce admin, the account owner, or someone higher in the role hierarchy.” Opportunity team members move only “when the Keep Opportunity Team option is selected” (Considerations for Changing a Record’s Owner (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help, checked 2026-11-07).

What an architect decides here

Who may share by hand: whether the owner, the managers above them, users with Modify All Records, and Full Access holders are the right people for each object.
Whether “Keep manual shares when transferring records” is on for the org, and how people are told.
Where manual shares are becoming a pattern, and which rule or team replaces them.
Who reviews manual shares, since they’re the one way to share that no design document lists.
Which objects people need to share by hand on mobile or in Experience Cloud sites, where manual sharing in Lightning isn’t supported.

Beyond the exam: what AI changes. “Share this account with the specialist for the renewal” is the kind of request an agent can do in one step: it creates a manual share. Nothing in your sharing settings shows that it happened, and the share stays until the owner changes or someone removes it. If agents can create manual shares, decide who they act for, what they’re allowed to share, and how you’ll find the shares they made. Chapter 20 covers agents.

Explore

Manual Sharing (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
Grant Access to Records with Manual Sharing in Lightning Experience (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
Manual Sharing Considerations (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)
Keep Manual Shares When Transferring Records (opens in a new tab), Salesforce Help (checked 2026-11-07)