Definition
Manual Sharing is a configuration tool or concept within Salesforce administration that governs platform behavior. Administrators use it to manage access, enforce data quality, and customize the user experience without writing code.
Real-World Example
a Salesforce administrator at Coastal Health recently implemented Manual Sharing to maintain data quality and enforce organizational policies across the platform. By properly setting up Manual Sharing, they prevent common data entry errors and ensure that users follow established business processes, which saves the support team hours of cleanup work each week.
Why Manual Sharing Matters
Manual Sharing in Salesforce allows record owners and administrators to grant access to specific records on a case-by-case basis. It sits above the baseline sharing model defined by Organization-Wide Defaults and Sharing Rules, providing a flexible mechanism for exceptions. When the standard sharing model doesn't cover a specific need, such as a sales rep wanting to share a single Opportunity with a colleague in a different territory, Manual Sharing allows targeted access without changing org-wide settings. This is done through the Sharing button on individual records, where users can grant Read Only or Read/Write access to specific users, roles, or public groups.
While Manual Sharing provides necessary flexibility, over-reliance on it creates governance nightmares at scale. When hundreds of records have individual sharing exceptions, it becomes nearly impossible to audit who has access to what data. Manual shares are also deleted when the record owner changes, which can silently revoke access that teams depend on. Organizations should treat Manual Sharing as an exception mechanism, not a primary sharing strategy. If the same type of sharing exception is needed repeatedly, it should be codified as a Sharing Rule or handled through programmatic sharing via Apex Managed Sharing. Regular audits of manual shares help identify patterns that should be converted to declarative sharing rules.
How Organizations Use Manual Sharing
- Coastal Health Systems — A department head at Coastal Health needs to share a specific patient account record with a specialist in another department for a cross-functional care plan. Since the org's sharing model restricts access by department, she uses Manual Sharing to grant the specialist Read/Write access to just that one account without opening up all department records.
- Pinnacle Financial Services — A financial advisor at Pinnacle is going on leave and needs a colleague to manage three specific high-value client accounts during her absence. She manually shares these accounts with Read/Write access rather than transferring ownership, so she retains ownership and the sharing automatically reverts when the admin removes it after she returns.
- Summit Engineering — Summit's project manager manually shares a strategic Opportunity with the CTO who isn't in the sales hierarchy but needs visibility for a board presentation. This one-time share provides the CTO with Read Only access without modifying the role hierarchy or creating a sharing rule that would grant broader access than intended.