How does Sharing Rule work in Salesforce?
Sharing rules are the primary mechanism for opening access when OWD is set to Private or Public Read Only. They come in two types: ownership-based sharing rules (share records owned by members of one group with another group) and criteria-based sharing rules (share records that match specific field values, regardless of owner). Access can be granted as Read Only or Read/Write. Target groups can be roles, roles and subordinates, public groups, territories, or queues.
Sharing rules are evaluated asynchronously and update the sharing table, an internal Salesforce table that tracks which users can access which records. In orgs with millions of records and complex sharing configurations, the sharing table can grow very large, which impacts performance on record access checks. Salesforce recommends keeping sharing rules under the per-object limit (typically 300 owner-based and 50 criteria-based per object for most editions). Clientell AI can visualize your sharing model, identify redundant rules, and optimize your configuration for performance.