Salesforce DictionarySalesforce DictionarySalesforce DictionarySalesforce DictionaryWork assignment vs sharing access
A queue is a Salesforce ownership and routing mechanism that holds records and makes them available to a defined group of users until one of them takes ownership. It is the platform's answer to the question: "Who works this record next?" when the answer is "whoever from the team grabs it first." Queues are commonly used for Leads, Cases, Tasks, and custom objects where the work needs to flow to a pool of people rather than a single named owner. Each queue has its own list of members (users, public groups, roles, role-and-subordinates), and the queue itself acts as the record owner until a user manually accepts ownership or an assignment rule routes the record out. Queue members see the records in the queue's list view and can take ownership with one click. Reports can filter by queue ownership, so it stays visible who is sitting on backlog. Queues support multi-object assignment, so the same queue can hold Leads, Cases, and custom records together, although most teams keep one queue per object for clarity.
A Public Group in Salesforce is an arbitrary collection of users used as a single sharing or access target. Where Role Hierarchy models the formal chain of command and Account Teams model per-record collaboration, Public Groups model anything that does not fit either pattern: a cross-functional Compliance Review group spanning Legal, Finance, and Sales Ops; a Strategic Accounts team spanning AEs from three regions; a Vertical Specialists group spanning sales and service users who all work the Healthcare segment. The Public Group has a Name and a Description, plus a membership list. Public Groups exist because real organizations rarely fit a clean tree. A Salesforce admin can model the org chart through Role Hierarchy, but the org chart describes who reports to whom, not who needs access to what. The actual access patterns in any large company are full of cross-cutting relationships that the hierarchy does not capture. Public Groups let you express those relationships explicitly, then use them as the target of Sharing Rules, List View visibility, Report and Dashboard folder sharing, Manual Sharing, and a handful of other places that need to grant access to a defined set of users.
| Dimension | Queue | Public Group |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Purpose | Route and assign records to a team | Share record access with a group of users |
| Record Ownership | Can own records (Cases, Leads, etc.) | Cannot own records |
| List Views | Members see queue list views | No associated list views |
| Assignment Rules | Can receive records from assignment rules | Cannot receive assigned records |
| Sharing Rules | Can be used in sharing rules | Can be used in sharing rules |
When you need to route and distribute work items to a team for processing.
When you need to share record access with a specific group of users.