Contact sharing rules do not grant Users access to Contacts as expected

Check Sharing Settings

Check the Organization-Wide Sharing Defaults for Contacts from the Sharing Settings.

In Salesforce Classic
Click on Setup | Security Controls | Sharing Settings

In Lightning Experience
Click on the Gear icon | Setup | Security | Sharing Settings

If Contact sharing is set to 'Controlled by Parent,' then sharing access to Contacts is controlled by access to the related Account record.

When Contact sharing is set to 'Controlled by Parent,' Contacts may not be shared independently from Accounts, so Contact sharing rules are not applied (even if they are defined).


To address this, you can:

1. Set up an Account sharing rule to share the Accounts that the Contacts are related to. For more information, please refer to Create Sharing Rules.
2. Change the Organization-Wide Default for Contacts to a value other than 'Controlled by Parent', so that the Contact Sharing Rules will apply.

• Private
• Public Read-Only

• Changes to Organization-Wide Defaults can only be made by System administrators.
• 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. See more here:  Considerations for Sharing and Accessing Contacts
• If a Contact is not linked to an Account, it will be private -- irrespective of Organization-Wide Defaults.
• For more information, please refer to Set Your Organization-Wide Sharing Defaults.

Related Content:  
'View All' permission on parent object does not automatically give access to child object
Define Sharing Rules Trailhead Module
Create Sharing Rules Trailhead Module