Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer certification video training course by prepaway along with practice test questions and answers, study guide and exam dumps provides the ultimate training package to help you pass.

Mastering Salesforce Sharing and Visibility: Architect Certification Course

Course Overview

The Salesforce Sharing and Visibility Architect certification is one of the most respected credentials in the Salesforce ecosystem. It focuses on designing secure, scalable, and effective data access strategies for enterprise solutions. This course is designed to guide you through the exam objectives in detail and provide practical knowledge required to pass the exam while strengthening your ability to work as an architect in real-world Salesforce implementations.

Sharing and visibility are at the heart of Salesforce security. As organizations scale, data models become complex, and access requirements expand. This course equips you with the necessary skills to analyze requirements, design secure solutions, and implement sharing models that align with business goals. It ensures that you not only prepare for the exam but also gain expertise that employers and clients seek in Salesforce professionals.

Importance of the Certification

Salesforce professionals who achieve the Sharing and Visibility Architect certification stand out in the industry as experts in data security and access design. It is a prerequisite milestone toward the Salesforce Certified Technical Architect path, making it highly valuable for those aiming to advance in the Salesforce architect journey. With this certification, you demonstrate your ability to evaluate and implement security and access solutions across large-scale organizations.

Who This Course is For

This course is for Salesforce architects who want to specialize in sharing and visibility. It is ideal for experienced Salesforce administrators, consultants, and developers who wish to elevate their careers into architectural roles. It is also suitable for professionals preparing for the Salesforce Architect Designer certifications and those aspiring to eventually pursue the Salesforce Certified Technical Architect credential.

Course Requirements

Before starting this course, you should have a strong understanding of Salesforce fundamentals. Prior certifications such as Salesforce Administrator, Salesforce Platform App Builder, or Salesforce Data Architect are highly recommended. Practical experience with Salesforce data models, role hierarchies, profiles, and permission sets is essential. A minimum of two to three years of Salesforce implementation experience will help you connect the concepts with real-world applications.

Course Modules

This course is divided into five major parts, each designed to address critical aspects of the exam and real-world application. The five parts are Fundamentals of Sharing and Visibility, Security Model and Design, Declarative Sharing Mechanisms, Programmatic Sharing Models, and Governance and Enterprise Strategy. Each part will focus on detailed explanations, design principles, and scenario-based applications to reinforce your understanding.

Understanding Sharing and Visibility

To begin your journey, you must understand what sharing and visibility mean in the Salesforce platform. Salesforce’s data access framework is built to balance security with usability. Organizations need to ensure that data is secure while still accessible to those who need it. This balance is achieved by implementing a layered approach consisting of object-level security, field-level security, record-level access, and sharing rules.

Sharing and visibility are not only about restricting access but also about enabling collaboration. A well-designed sharing model improves trust, protects sensitive data, and ensures that users can perform their roles efficiently without unnecessary restrictions.

The Role of an Architect in Sharing and Visibility

An architect’s role is not only to know how Salesforce’s sharing features work but also to design solutions that meet complex business requirements. This requires deep knowledge of both technical capabilities and business processes. An architect must analyze access requirements, anticipate scalability issues, and propose solutions that align with security policies and compliance needs.

Architects also work with stakeholders to gather requirements, model sharing strategies, and ensure that solutions meet long-term business objectives. They are responsible for balancing the need for data security with the demand for operational efficiency.

Exam Structure and Objectives

The Sharing and Visibility Architect exam focuses on four key areas. These include evaluating the role hierarchy and object relationships, analyzing programmatic sharing models, designing security and sharing models, and ensuring compliance with enterprise requirements. The exam is scenario-based, testing your ability to apply knowledge in real-world contexts.

The certification exam typically consists of multiple-choice and multiple-select questions. It requires a passing score of around 65 to 70 percent and covers a wide range of concepts such as implicit sharing, Apex managed sharing, sharing recalculations, and large-scale performance considerations.

Key Knowledge Areas

One of the most important knowledge areas is the Salesforce record access framework. You must understand the difference between object-level permissions, field-level security, and record-level access. You also need to understand sharing mechanisms such as role hierarchies, sharing rules, manual sharing, and programmatic sharing.

Another key area is security considerations in enterprise-scale organizations. Large organizations often have complex sharing models that require balancing performance with security. Knowing when to apply each sharing model and how to troubleshoot performance issues is critical.

Real-World Relevance

In enterprise environments, sharing and visibility challenges often arise due to mergers, acquisitions, or global rollouts. Architects are responsible for designing models that can adapt to change. For example, an architect may be tasked with designing a solution where certain regions require strict data privacy while other regions demand collaborative access across business units.

Your ability to design solutions that meet these requirements without creating excessive complexity is what sets you apart as a certified architect.

Course Description

This course takes you step by step through each concept required for the Sharing and Visibility Architect exam. It begins with the fundamentals of Salesforce security and gradually builds toward advanced topics such as programmatic sharing, Apex managed sharing, and large data volume considerations. Each concept is supported by real-world examples and scenario-based explanations to help you connect theory with practice.

You will learn not only what each feature does but also why and when it should be used. By the end of this course, you will have the confidence to design sharing and visibility models that meet complex business requirements and prepare you for the certification exam.

Learning Approach

This training is structured to balance conceptual understanding with practical application. You will be guided through examples, scenarios, and best practices. Each part of the course builds upon the previous one, allowing you to progressively deepen your expertise. The language is kept clear and simple, with shorter paragraphs and multiple headings to ensure ease of reading and comprehension.

Security Model and Design

The security model is the backbone of any Salesforce implementation. When designing sharing and visibility solutions, architects must ensure that data security is prioritized without limiting user productivity. Security in Salesforce is layered, combining different levels of access controls to protect data at the object, field, and record levels. The design of a security model requires a balance of flexibility, scalability, and compliance with business regulations.

The Core of Salesforce Security

At its core, Salesforce security is about controlling who can see what data and what actions they can perform on that data. Architects need to build solutions that safeguard sensitive information while enabling collaboration across departments. The security model provides both broad administrative tools and granular controls, giving architects the ability to design solutions that meet highly specific requirements.

Object Level Security

Object level security determines whether a user has access to specific objects. Profiles and permission sets are the primary tools used to manage this type of security. Profiles define baseline permissions, while permission sets provide flexibility by granting additional permissions without altering the user’s profile. Designing a scalable solution means using permission sets effectively to support modular access.

Field Level Security

Field level security goes a step deeper by restricting access to specific fields within an object. This ensures sensitive information such as salary details or personal identification numbers remains hidden from unauthorized users. Field level security is enforced through profiles, permission sets, and field accessibility settings. A good design ensures that sensitive data is visible only to those with a business need.

Record Level Security

Record level security determines which individual records a user can access. This is where sharing and visibility become most complex. The architect must ensure that record access is aligned with business processes. Salesforce provides several mechanisms for record access, such as organization wide defaults, role hierarchies, sharing rules, teams, and manual sharing. The correct combination depends on the requirements of the organization.

Organization Wide Defaults

Organization wide defaults establish the baseline access for records in an object. For example, an object might be set to private, ensuring that only the record owner and those above them in the role hierarchy have access. Alternatively, an object may be set to public read only or public read write, depending on the level of openness required. Designing with organization wide defaults requires balancing privacy with collaboration.

Role Hierarchies

Role hierarchies provide vertical record access by granting users access to the records owned by users below them in the hierarchy. This mirrors management structures and is useful for organizations where managers need visibility into their subordinates’ data. Architects must carefully design hierarchies to avoid unnecessary complexity, ensuring that access is intuitive and aligned with organizational reporting structures.

Sharing Rules

Sharing rules extend record access horizontally, granting additional access to users in public groups, roles, or territories. Sharing rules can be based on ownership or criteria, making them flexible for addressing different use cases. A well designed sharing model often includes carefully crafted sharing rules that ensure collaboration across teams without compromising data security.

Teams and Account Teams

Teams provide another mechanism for record sharing, particularly in opportunities, cases, and accounts. Account teams allow multiple users to collaborate on an account, with each member assigned a role and level of access. Designing effective use of teams improves collaboration but requires thoughtful governance to avoid clutter and mismanagement.

Manual Sharing

Manual sharing allows record owners and administrators to grant access to specific users. While powerful, manual sharing is not scalable and should be used sparingly. Architects should rely on declarative and programmatic sharing mechanisms for long term solutions, reserving manual sharing for exceptional cases.

The Principle of Least Privilege

A fundamental principle of security design is the principle of least privilege. Users should be granted the minimum level of access required to perform their roles. This reduces risks of data exposure and ensures compliance with data protection policies. Over granting access leads to vulnerabilities, while under granting access hinders productivity. Striking the right balance is critical.

Compliance and Regulations

Modern organizations must comply with strict data protection regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA. Salesforce architects must design security models that ensure compliance with these regulations. This often means implementing strict field level controls, encrypting sensitive data, and limiting cross regional access. Regulatory compliance adds another dimension of complexity to security design.

Scalability in Security Design

Enterprise environments often deal with thousands of users and millions of records. Security models must be scalable to handle this volume without causing performance issues. Architects must consider the performance impact of sharing recalculations, complex role hierarchies, and large numbers of sharing rules. Scalability requires simplifying models and using best practices to avoid bottlenecks.

Performance Considerations

Performance is a critical aspect of security design. For example, complex sharing rules can increase recalculation times when records are updated. Large data volumes can slow down queries if sharing is not optimized. Architects must be proactive in designing solutions that are not only secure but also performant. This includes limiting the number of criteria based sharing rules and optimizing role hierarchies.

Declarative vs Programmatic Sharing

Declarative sharing relies on built in tools such as role hierarchies and sharing rules, while programmatic sharing uses Apex managed sharing for custom solutions. Declarative options are preferred for simplicity and scalability, but programmatic sharing becomes necessary when business requirements cannot be met with out of the box features. The architect’s role is to determine when to use each approach.

Trust and Transparency

Security is not just about technology but also about building trust. When users feel confident that data is secure, they are more likely to collaborate. Transparency in how sharing and visibility are designed also increases adoption. Architects should communicate their design decisions clearly to stakeholders to foster trust and alignment.

Security Governance

Strong governance ensures that security models remain effective over time. Governance includes policies for creating and managing roles, permission sets, and sharing rules. It also includes ongoing audits and reviews to ensure that access levels remain appropriate. A governance framework ensures that as the organization evolves, the security model adapts without becoming chaotic.

Real World Design Scenarios

Consider a multinational corporation with regional divisions. Each region requires visibility into its own accounts but not into other regions’ data. However, executives need global visibility. The architect must design a role hierarchy and sharing rules that provide regional separation while ensuring executives have the necessary oversight.

Another scenario involves a healthcare organization where patient records must be accessible only to assigned medical staff. The architect must design a model that enforces strict confidentiality while enabling collaboration among doctors, nurses, and administrative staff.

Common Mistakes in Security Design

One of the most common mistakes is overusing manual sharing. This leads to scalability issues and inconsistent access patterns. Another mistake is designing overly complex role hierarchies, which make maintenance difficult and introduce performance challenges. Avoiding these mistakes requires foresight, simplicity, and adherence to best practices.

Best Practices for Security Model Design

Best practices include starting with the most restrictive organization wide defaults and then opening access as needed. Use permission sets for flexibility, keep role hierarchies as simple as possible, and prefer declarative sharing mechanisms before considering programmatic options. Always document design decisions to support long term maintenance and governance.

Continuous Monitoring

Security design is not a one time task but an ongoing process. Continuous monitoring of access patterns, user feedback, and system performance ensures that the model remains effective. Salesforce provides tools such as the Security Health Check and Event Monitoring to support ongoing governance and monitoring.

Preparing for the Exam on Security and Design

For the Sharing and Visibility Architect exam, you must be able to analyze complex requirements and propose effective security designs. Scenario based questions will test your ability to balance security, scalability, and performance. Hands on experience in designing security models is essential for success.

Bridging Knowledge and Practice

This part of the course does more than prepare you for the exam. It equips you to handle real world security challenges in Salesforce. By mastering the security model and design principles, you become capable of building trusted, scalable, and compliant solutions that align with organizational goals.

Declarative Sharing Mechanisms

Declarative sharing mechanisms are the built in tools that Salesforce provides to configure access without code. These tools are essential for architects because they are scalable, maintainable, and easy to govern. Declarative options are always preferred over programmatic methods unless business requirements make them insufficient. By mastering declarative sharing, architects ensure that they can deliver solutions that balance simplicity with flexibility.

The Value of Declarative Approaches

Declarative sharing mechanisms are valuable because they require no code and are straightforward to configure. They also integrate seamlessly with Salesforce’s underlying architecture. This means performance is generally optimized and long term governance is easier. Declarative options are also less prone to error compared to custom code, making them the first choice in most scenarios.

Organization Wide Defaults as a Foundation

Organization wide defaults serve as the foundation for record access. They define the most restrictive baseline access for each object. For example, if accounts are set to private, only record owners and their managers can see them by default. Declarative sharing mechanisms such as role hierarchies and sharing rules then expand access as required. The best practice is to start restrictive and open access gradually.

Role Hierarchies and Declarative Control

Role hierarchies are one of the most important declarative sharing mechanisms. They reflect the reporting structure of the organization and grant managers access to the records owned by their subordinates. Architects must design role hierarchies carefully to avoid unnecessary complexity. The hierarchy should be designed for visibility and not as a tool for reporting. Reporting should be handled by other Salesforce features such as reports and dashboards.

Sharing Rules as Flexible Extensions

Sharing rules allow architects to extend access beyond the role hierarchy. They come in two forms, owner based and criteria based. Owner based rules allow records owned by certain users to be shared with other roles or groups. Criteria based rules allow access to records that meet defined conditions. This flexibility makes sharing rules a powerful declarative option for addressing cross team collaboration needs.

Criteria Based Sharing Rules

Criteria based rules are particularly useful in complex organizations where access is determined by attributes of the record. For example, opportunities with a region field set to “EMEA” can be shared automatically with users in the EMEA role. This declarative approach eliminates the need for custom development and keeps access aligned with business logic.

Public Groups and Their Role in Sharing

Public groups are another tool used in declarative sharing. A public group can contain individual users, roles, or other groups. Sharing rules can be applied to public groups to simplify access management. Instead of creating multiple sharing rules for individual users, architects can design public groups that align with teams or departments. This approach improves scalability and reduces administrative overhead.

Account Teams for Collaboration

Account teams allow multiple users to collaborate on an account. Each team member is assigned a role and a level of access. This declarative sharing mechanism is particularly valuable in industries like sales and customer management where collaboration is critical. Account teams can be predefined and added automatically to accounts, ensuring consistency in access.

Opportunity Teams and Case Teams

Like account teams, opportunity teams and case teams provide collaborative access to specific records. These teams allow multiple stakeholders to contribute to a sales cycle or customer support process. By designing teams into the sharing model, architects create a collaborative framework that improves productivity while maintaining control over sensitive data.

Manual Sharing in Declarative Contexts

Although manual sharing is often considered a last resort, it is still a declarative mechanism. It allows record owners or administrators to share a specific record with individual users. Manual sharing is best suited for exceptions that cannot be handled by role hierarchies or sharing rules. While not scalable, it provides flexibility when unique access requirements arise.

Queue Based Access

Queues provide another declarative mechanism for sharing records such as leads, cases, and custom objects. Records placed in a queue are accessible to all members of that queue. This is particularly useful in customer service environments where teams need to work collaboratively on incoming cases. Architects can design queues that align with functional teams, ensuring efficient workload distribution.

Territory Management and Declarative Sharing

Territory management extends role hierarchies by aligning access with geography, product lines, or business units. It allows records such as accounts and opportunities to be shared based on defined territories rather than reporting structures. This is valuable for global organizations where reporting hierarchies do not reflect the way the business operates. Declarative territory models provide flexibility without requiring custom solutions.

Criteria Based Territories

Within territory management, criteria based territories extend access declaratively. For example, accounts with an industry field set to “Healthcare” can be automatically assigned to the Healthcare territory. This ensures that records are assigned to the right users based on business logic without the need for manual intervention.

Declarative Sharing and Compliance

Declarative mechanisms also support compliance requirements. For example, field level security combined with sharing rules ensures that sensitive data is restricted while general data remains accessible. Using declarative controls makes compliance easier to manage and audit. Regulators often prefer declarative configurations because they are transparent and easier to demonstrate during audits.

Balancing Declarative Options

An architect must balance the available declarative mechanisms to design efficient solutions. Over reliance on one mechanism such as sharing rules can create complexity. Instead, combining role hierarchies, public groups, and teams provides a layered approach. This balance ensures scalability, performance, and ease of maintenance.

Declarative Sharing and Performance

Declarative sharing mechanisms are optimized for performance, but poor design can still create bottlenecks. For example, too many criteria based sharing rules can slow recalculations. Large role hierarchies can also create challenges. Architects must consider performance impacts when designing declarative sharing models, ensuring that solutions are both secure and efficient.

Governance of Declarative Sharing

Governance plays a vital role in maintaining declarative sharing models. Clear policies for creating and managing sharing rules, groups, and teams prevent confusion and duplication. Regular reviews and audits ensure that access levels remain appropriate. Governance frameworks also support training and communication, ensuring that administrators understand how to manage sharing effectively.

Real World Example of Declarative Sharing

Consider a global retail organization with regional sales teams. Organization wide defaults are set to private for accounts. Role hierarchies provide managers access to their team’s accounts. Public groups are created for regional teams, and sharing rules are defined to grant access to accounts based on the region field. Account teams allow collaboration between sales representatives and customer service staff. This combination of declarative mechanisms ensures that access is secure, scalable, and aligned with business operations.

Declarative Sharing vs Programmatic Sharing

While declarative options should always be considered first, there are cases where they are not sufficient. Complex requirements such as dynamic record ownership or advanced compliance restrictions may require programmatic solutions. However, declarative mechanisms often handle the majority of use cases effectively. The architect’s skill lies in knowing when to stop with declarative options and when to extend with programmatic methods.

Preparing for the Exam on Declarative Sharing

The Sharing and Visibility Architect exam will include scenario based questions that test your ability to apply declarative mechanisms effectively. You may be asked to design solutions for global organizations, compliance driven industries, or collaborative environments. Success requires not only theoretical knowledge but also hands on experience in configuring sharing models in Salesforce.

Practical Exercises for Mastery

To master declarative sharing, practice by designing models for different business scenarios. Create role hierarchies, configure sharing rules, set up public groups, and test account teams. Experiment with criteria based rules and territory management. Hands on exercises will strengthen your ability to design solutions quickly and confidently in both the exam and real world contexts.

Declarative Sharing as a Career Skill

Mastering declarative sharing is more than just exam preparation. It is a career defining skill for Salesforce architects. Organizations value professionals who can design secure, scalable, and compliant solutions without unnecessary complexity. By demonstrating expertise in declarative mechanisms, you position yourself as a trusted architect capable of solving real business challenges.

The Path Ahead

With declarative sharing mastered, you are ready to explore programmatic sharing, which extends these concepts with custom Apex solutions. Understanding both declarative and programmatic approaches ensures that you can design comprehensive solutions that meet the full range of business requirements. The next part of this course will focus on programmatic sharing and how it complements the declarative model.

Prepaway's Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer video training course for passing certification exams is the only solution which you need.