Considerations for Using Account Teams

Access to Accounts and Related Records

• These access methods determine users' access levels for accounts and related records.
  • Profiles
  • Org-wide Defaults (OWD)
  • Role Hierarchy
  • Sharing Rules
  • Manual Sharing
  • Account Team Member Record
• Your Salesforce admin sets org-wide default access to accounts and related records.
• Team member access must be equal to or less restrictive than the org-wide default. You can grant team members more access than the default, but not less.
• Only the account owner or someone higher than them in the direct role hierarchy chain can:
  • Grant team members more access than the org-wide default
  • Add team members who don't have Read or Read/Write access

Access to Child Records and Fields

• You can't grant team members greater access to child records than you have yourself. For example, if you have Read access to child records on an account, you can’t give a team member Read/Write access. Ask your Salesforce admin to grant the needed access.
• The fields available when a user adds a team member are based on the user’s level of access to the account.

When Account and Opportunity OWD Is Private

Accounts and opportunities have linked access levels.

• If you grant team members access to an opportunity, Salesforce gives Read access to the related account, even if the OWD is private.
• If you remove a team member’s access to an individual account, Salesforce removes them from all related opportunity teams.

Viewing Account Access Levels

You can view account team member access levels from two different locations.

• The Team Member Access action on an Account record. This view shows the highest access level that the user has across all access methods.
• The individual account team member (ATM) record. This view shows only the access level assigned when the ATM record was created.

Account Owner Changes

Sharing rules grant access to individuals or to groups (public groups, queues, roles). That distinction matters for team member retention during ownership changes. If a user with group-based access adds account team members, those team members are removed when the account owner changes, even if you’ve selected Keep account team.

To keep team members when ownership changes, one of these types of users must add the team members.

• A Salesforce admin
• A user with Modify All Data permission
• The account owner
• A user higher than the account owner in the owner’s direct role hierarchy chain (not a parallel branch)

Portal Users

You can’t add high volume portal users to teams.