File, Your Company
A Your Company file in Salesforce is a file shared with everyone who has an internal license in the org.
Definition
A Your Company file in Salesforce is a file shared with everyone who has an internal license in the org. Once a file reaches this state, it carries a "your company" icon, and any internal user can find it, open it, and download it. It sits one step below a public link, which drops the login requirement entirely. Your Company keeps the file behind authentication while making it visible org-wide.
The state is not a switch you flip. Salesforce derives it from the sharing rows (ContentDocumentLink records) attached to the file. When a file is shared so that all internal users gain access, through an all-employees public group, a library open to everyone, or a Visibility value that covers all users, the platform reports the file as Your Company. Pull that org-wide grant and the file drops back to Privately Shared.
How the Your Company state is earned and managed
What makes a file reach the Your Company state
A file lands in the Your Company state when its sharing reaches every internal user, not through a single setting. The usual triggers are three. First, the file is shared with a public group whose membership covers all employees. Second, the file is published to a library that all internal users can open. Third, a sharing row sets Visibility to AllUsers, which exposes the file to all users in the org. Salesforce reads the ContentDocumentLink rows on the file and classifies the privacy state from what it finds. Because the state is computed rather than stored as a flag, it shifts the moment the sharing changes. Add the all-employees group and the file becomes Your Company. Remove it and the file falls back to a narrower state. This is why two files that look identical in a list can carry different privacy icons: the difference lives in their sharing rows, not in any property you set on the file itself. Admins who understand this read the links, not the file record, to explain why a file is org-wide visible.
The ContentDocumentLink rows that drive the state
Every share of a Salesforce file is one ContentDocumentLink row joining the file (ContentDocument) to a destination: a user, a group, a record, or a library. Two fields on that row shape access. ShareType sets the permission: V gives view-only, C gives collaborator (view plus edit and re-share), and I means the access is inferred from the linked record. Visibility sets the audience: AllUsers makes the file available to all users, InternalUsers restricts it to internal users, and SharedUsers limits it to people the file is explicitly shared with. A Your Company file is one whose combined rows reach everyone internal, most often a row pointing at an all-employees group or a Visibility of AllUsers. You can query these rows with SOQL to see exactly who has access. Reading ContentDocumentLink for a file answers the practical question every audit asks: is this file reaching the whole company, and through which grant? The answer is always in the rows, never in a single privacy attribute.
Your Company versus Privately Shared
The boundary between Privately Shared and Your Company is audience scope, and nothing else. Privately Shared aims a file at named recipients: a handful of users, one or two groups, or the people with access to a record the file is attached to. Your Company aims the same file at the entire internal population. A deck shared with the twelve people on the launch team is Privately Shared. The same deck shared with the All Employees group is Your Company. Nothing about the file changes; only the reach of its sharing rows changes. This matters when you tighten access. To pull a file out of the Your Company state, you remove the org-wide grant, the all-employees group row or the AllUsers visibility, and the file settles back into Privately Shared if narrower shares remain, or Private if none do. Teams that treat Your Company as a deliberate choice, rather than a side effect of a convenient group share, keep tighter control over what the whole company can see.
Why libraries are the cleaner path to org-wide content
The tidiest way to publish org-wide content is a library, not a pile of per-file group shares. A library is a container that organizes content and shares it with colleagues, and library admins can build and manage libraries in Lightning Experience. You can even nest folders inside a library to keep large collections in order. Grant the library to an audience that covers all internal users, and every file you add inherits that reach without a separate share on each one. One library can hold hundreds of policy documents, all reaching the company through a single membership rule. Compare that with sharing each PDF individually to an all-employees group: the access is the same, but the maintenance multiplies with every file. Libraries also give you a natural review surface. When the HR or security team needs to confirm what the whole company can read, they look at one library and its membership instead of chasing scattered file shares. For reference content that grows over time, the library is the path that stays manageable.
Internal users only, not external audiences
The Your Company state covers internal users, the people holding standard Salesforce licenses in the org. It does not stretch to Experience Cloud external users such as community or partner accounts. A Visibility of InternalUsers makes that explicit by holding a file to internal users only, even if other rows are broader. So sharing a file with an all-employees internal group does not put it in front of community members. Reaching external audiences is a separate exercise with its own mechanics: sharing into community-facing groups, publishing to channels external users can open, or generating a public link that needs no login at all. Mixing these up causes two opposite mistakes. One is assuming a Your Company file is visible to partners when it is not, leaving external users unable to find content you thought you published to them. The other is assuming an internal-only file is safe when a broader community share has quietly exposed it. Checking the Visibility value and the destination of each sharing row tells you which audience a file actually reaches.
Org-wide and authenticated versus a public link
Your Company and a public link both feel like broad sharing, but they sit on opposite sides of the login wall. A Your Company file is visible across the whole org, yet every viewer still signs in to Salesforce first. Access rides on their internal license. A public link is different in kind. Creating a public link generates a URL you can share with anyone inside or outside the company, and anyone holding that link can view and download the file without authenticating. You can soften the exposure with a password or an expiration date on the link, but the default is open access to whoever has the URL. Treat the two as separate decisions. Your Company answers who inside the company can see this, while keeping the login requirement. A public link answers can people outside the company reach this without a Salesforce account. Files holding sensitive material can be perfectly fine as Your Company and a serious problem as a public link, so the jump from one to the other deserves a deliberate review rather than a quick click.
Auditing what the whole company can see
Org-wide-visible content tends to pile up. A file shared with an all-employees group for one launch stays shared long after the launch ends, and nobody notices until a review surfaces it. A SOQL query over ContentDocumentLink, filtered to rows that point at all-internal-users groups or carry a Visibility of AllUsers, lists every file the whole company can currently open. Run it on a schedule, then cross-check the results against how sensitive each file is. The goal is to catch the file that drifted into Your Company by accident: a salary band sheet, an unreleased roadmap, a contract draft that should have stayed scoped to a small group. When you find over-sharing, the fix is the same as any other state change. Remove the org-wide grant so the file returns to a narrower privacy state, and confirm the remaining rows match who should really have access. Pairing a periodic query with clear ownership of the all-employees group keeps the Your Company tier intentional instead of a quiet catch-all that grows unchecked.
How to put a file in the Your Company state
There is no Your Company toggle. You reach the state by sharing a file so that all internal users gain access, then confirming the platform reports the org-wide privacy state. The steps below use the most durable path, a library open to everyone, with a per-file group share as the alternative.
- Pick or build the org-wide audience
Decide how all internal users will be covered. The cleanest option is a public group whose membership includes every employee. Confirm who owns that group and how members are added, because that rule governs every file you share with it.
- Create a library for the content
In the Files app, create a library to hold the org-wide reference material. Add folders if the collection is large. A library lets one membership grant cover many files at once instead of sharing each file separately.
- Share the library with everyone internal
Add the all-employees public group to the library as a member with at least view access. Every file you add to the library now inherits org-wide reach, which is what places those files in the Your Company state.
- Add files and confirm the state
Upload or move files into the library. Open a file and check that it shows the "your company" icon, meaning anyone in the company can find and view it. To verify programmatically, query ContentDocumentLink and confirm the rows reach all internal users.
Grant the all-employees group access to the library so every file inside reaches all internal users. The most maintainable route to Your Company for reference content.
Share a single file directly with an all-employees public group. Faster for one file, but each file needs its own share, which does not scale across a collection.
On a sharing row, AllUsers exposes the file to all users, InternalUsers holds it to internal users only, and SharedUsers limits it to explicit recipients. Your Company needs all internal users covered.
V grants view-only, C grants collaborator (view, edit, re-share), and I infers access from a linked record. Reference content is usually shared as view-only so the whole company cannot edit it.
- Your Company is computed from sharing rows, not a stored flag. Remove the org-wide grant and the file silently drops back to Privately Shared or Private.
- The state covers internal users only. Sharing with an all-employees internal group does not make a file visible to Experience Cloud community or partner users.
- Do not confuse Your Company with a public link. Your Company keeps the login requirement; a public link removes it and lets anyone with the URL view and download the file.
- Files shared org-wide accumulate. Audit ContentDocumentLink periodically so a sensitive file does not stay company-visible long after it should have been scoped down.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to File, Your Company in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- ContentDocumentLink Object ReferenceSalesforce
- Share Files Via Link (Salesforce Help)Salesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on File, Your Company.
- ContentDocumentLink Object ReferenceSalesforce
- ContentDocumentLink Field Reference GuideSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on File, Your Company.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What does the Your Company file-sharing state mean for who can see a file?
Q2. What distinguishes a Your Company file from a Privately Shared file?
Q3. What is the common, scalable way to make a file Your Company across the org?
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