Considerations for Sharing and Accessing Contacts

Here’s some things to know about sharing and accessing contact records.

Available in: Salesforce Classic

Available in: Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

You can’t restrict access to contacts beyond your organization’s default access levels.
You need at least read access to the contacts and leads that you invite to an event. You need at least “Add Events” on a resource to invite it to an event.
A contact that isn’t linked to an account is always private, regardless of your organization’s sharing model. Only the owner of the contact and administrators can view it. Sharing rules and workflow rules don’t apply to private contacts. If your organization uses divisions, private contacts always belong to the global division.
If a recipient doesn’t have access to the account, you can’t share the contact unless you also have permission to share the account.
If your organization-wide default for contacts is set to Controlled by Parent, the Contact Access options aren’t available when you share related records such as accounts. Instead, all access to contacts is determined by the user’s access to the contact’s account.
If your organization-wide default for contacts is Controlled by Parent and your organization-wide default for accounts is Private, you can’t view contacts for accounts that you don’t own, even if you have the View All Records permission on the account object. However, if you own a contact on an account, you can view other contacts on the same account. (Access to a parent account gives you access to the associated child records.)

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