Sharing Records

Sharing Records

Collaboration with team members or others in the organization is integral to any business. For some, collaboration means conducting meetings, having discussions on phone or sending information via email while for some it is sharing data with peers and others in the organization.  
In CRM, customer detail, notes, project requirements, deal status, primary contact's details etc. are stored in different modules and managed by responsible individuals only. If the sales process requires a particular information be shared with other members then you must give the person necessary permissions to view, edit or refer to the record whenever necessary. Zoho CRM provides different types of data sharing, 
  1. Direct Sharing - Individual records can be shared with other users, roles, or groups. For example, a deal can be shared with another sales rep, or with sales managers, or with the deal planning team to promote cross selling.
  2. Indirect sharing - A record can be associated to a record and shared along with the parent record. For example, a deal can be associated with a contact and when you share the contact's record the deal too will be shared with the other user, roles, or groups. This type of sharing is called indirect or sharing records with their related-list. 
Records can be shared from any module, except:
  1. Activities module - Tasks, calls, and meetings are always associated to a record. So when the parent record is shared the associated activities are also shared. One cannot share them separately from the Activities module.
  2. Linking Module - Using the multi-select lookup fields you can associate multiple look-up values to a record and thereby establish a perfect many-to-many module association between two modules. A linking module is one that serves as a junction between two modules associated with a multi-select lookup field. Records in this module cannot be shared. See Also   Linking Module
Availability
Permission Required
Users with the Share permission for the module.

Permission to Share Records

CRM Administrators can share records with others by default. If you want users from other profile to share records, the administrators can enable the share permission for them. 

To enable permission to share records

  1. Click  Setup  > Security Control >  Profiles .
  2. Select a profile to which you want to enable the permission.
  3. Enable the  Share  permission under  Tool Permissions .
  4. Select the checkbox(es) for the corresponding modules to which you want to enable Share permission.
  5. Click  Save .

Sharing Records

There are three permissions that can be set for the users with whom a record is being shared:  

  1. Read Only - The users can only view the shared records
  2. Read/Write - The users  can view and edit the records . However, they cannot change the record owner or delete the record.
  3. Full Access - The users can view, edit, delete and change ownership of the records .
A user who is a forecast manager can view their peers records even if share data with peers is disabled. 
While sharing, you can specify if you want to share the record with related lists or without the related lists. When you share a record, all the related lists associated to the record can have different sharing permissions. For example, when an account, Zylker Widgets is shared with Read/Write permission, the associated contacts and open activities can be shared with Read Only permission. Please make sure you have the Share permission enabled in your profile to share records.

Records can be shared with others through:
  1. Private sharing   
  2. Public sharing 

Private Sharing
Public Sharing
Record can be shared with individual users (max. 10 users), roles (max. 5 roles), and groups (max. 5 groups)
Record can be shared with all users in the org. 
Each user, role, or group can have different permission All users have the same access permission
Related lists of a record can also be shared
Related list of a record cannot be shared
Sending feed notification on private record sharing:
Feed notifications can be sent to the users, roles, and groups when records are newly shared through private access.
To share records
  1. Go to the  Module  from which you want to share a record and select a record.
  2. In the  Record Details  page, click the  More Actions  icon and then click  Share.   
  3. In the Sharing [Record] popup, do the following: 
    1. Select the record access type: Private or Public.
      Public sharing: Choose the access permission: Read Only, Read & Write, or Full Access and click Share.Select the With Related List checkbox, if required.
      Private sharing : Click on the Add members bar, and select Users, Roles, or Groups from the drop-down list.
    2. Click Add , after selecting the desired users, roles and groups. Click Save . 
    3. Select the type of access (Read Only, Read & Write, or Full Access ) from the drop-down. 
  4. Select With Related List , if you want the the associated records to be shared as well.
  5. Select  Notify through feeds  to send notification to the users when records are shared.  
  6. Click Share .

Notes :

  • You can share records individually. However, you cannot share records from the module list view.
  • Only if a module's default organization permission is Private/Public Read, the record-level sharing feature can be applied. Also, the user must have the  Share permission enabled in their profiles in order to share records with other users.
  • The following associated records associated (as related list will )not be shared: closed activities, invited meetings, products, campaigns, contact roles, related lists added as part of an integration.
  • You cannot share a record that has been shared with you.
  • You can share a record with those members who have permission to access a particular module irrespective of whether they have record-level permission or not. 
  • Users must have "Full Access" to a record to be able to share it with other 
  • In private access, a record can be shared with a maximum of 10 users, 5 roles, and 5 groups as direct sharing .
  •  As indirect sharing in private access, a record can be shared with a maximum of 12 users, 5 roles, and 5 groups. 
    For example, Steve shares a deal with the pricing team (a group) and 10 of his co-workers (individual users) attaching quotations as related list to solicit suggestions about the discounts.
    Here, the deal is getting shared with 10 users and a group. Along with the deal, the records in the Quotes module are also shared with those 10 users and 1 group. Now, the deal is shared as direct sharing and the quotes are shared as indirect sharing through the deal. If the same quotations are associated with a contact and if Steve would like to share the contact with 10 users and 5 groups, the contact however will be shared with 10 users and 5 groups, the quotations will be shared only with 2 users and 4 groups, as the limit for those quotations is already consumed.
  • Record owners and their superiors with access to the record can share the records with other active and confirmed users in the organization.
  • If the access permission of a record is changed, then feed notification will not be sent to the user. For eg., if a record was shared with full access and later the access permission is changed to read only, then no notification alert will be sent to the user intimating about the same. 

Points to Remember

When there are different permissions to access the same record.
  • Profile permission is above all  - For all the shared records, the profile permission supersedes all other permissions. For instance, you share a lead with Mary, giving her full access to the record but Mary's profile permission gives her Read Only access for the Leads module. In this case, profile permission will supersede the record sharing permission and Mary will be able to only view the records.
  • Multiple permissions (via different features)  - A record can be shared as per the Territory hierarchy as well as through Data Sharing Rules. In this case, when multiple access permissions are provided to access the same record, the highest permission in all these will be applicable.
  • Multiple permissions (via different users)  - A record can be shared by different users. Let's say Mike, the Sales Manager, shared an account without any related list items with Mary, and provided her Read/Write permission. Amy, a sales rep shared the same contact with Mary with related list items and gave her Full Access. Here, the same record is shared by two users with two different permissions. In this case also, the highest permission will be applicable and Mary will have full access to the contact.
When there are multiple sharing for the same record.
  • Where a record is shared by different users - One record can be shared with a person by different users. Say, Contact B has four deals associated with it. One of which is a Big Deal and is accessible only to John, the Sales Manager. Other three deals are accessible by Mary too, the Sales Rep. If Mary shares Contact B with Mike, he will be able to access the contact and only the three deals associated to it that are accessible to Mary.
  • Where a record is shared by different ways - One record can be shared directly and the same can be shared via related list sharing. For example, Deal B can be shared directly with John. The same deal is associated with Contact B and another user shares it with John, indirectly sharing Deal B in its related list. That way the record is shared with the same user twice. If one revokes sharing, John will still be able to access the record. This is taken into consideration as a record can be shared with a maximum of 10 users. Through related lists, a record can be shared with a maximum of 12 users.
    Similarly, a Deal A is shared as public with all users with read access. The same Deal A is shared by Amy with John through indirect sharing via Contact A with read/write access. Now, since Deal A has different access levels, the higher permission is taken into consideration. i.e, John will have access to Deal A with read/write permission. If the public access to the record is revoked, John will still be able to read/write Deal A.

View Shared Records

For easy access to the records shared by you and those shared to you, two list views are available in all the modules;  [Records] Shared to Me  and  [Records] Shared by Me .


The shared records have a Timeline view, where you can see the log of the shared details: when the record was shared, with whom, what permissions were given, etc. 

You can check who shared a record with you. Records shared via Private access are denoted by a person icon.

Records shared via Public access are denoted by a globe icon. 

Manage Sharing

After sharing a record, you can always manage sharing by:

  • sharing the record with more members.
  • revoking sharing for individual users, roles, or groups.
  • changing the sharing permissions for members.
  • changing the record access type: private to public and vice versa.
  • viewing the sharing summary. 

To manage sharing

  1. Go to the  Module  from which you want to manage sharing.
  2. In the  Record Details  page, click the  More Actions  icon and then click  Share .
  3. In the  Sharing [Records]  popup, click  Manage Sharing .
    • Select the members with whom you want to share the record and choose the access permission as required. 
    • Move your mouse pointer to the users with whom the record is already shared and click the  Remove  icon to remove sharing.
    • Click the  View Summary  link.
      This provides a detailed log of the record sharing.
  4. Click  Done .

Revoke Sharing

If you have shared a record to members there is also an option to revoke complete sharing. On revoking, the record will no longer be accesible to those users but let's take this case: Mike has shared Deal A with Amy and John has shared Contact A along with its related lists with Amy. Contact A has Deal A associated to it. So when Mike revokes sharing, it will still be shared with Amy as it is indirectly shared by John along with its parent record (contact).

To revoke sharing

  1. Go to the  Module  from which you want to revoke sharing for a record and select the record.
  2. In the  Record Details  page, click the  More Actions  icon and then click  Share .
  3. In the Sharing [Records]  popup, click  Revoke Sharing .
  4. Click  Revoke to confirm. 
      

See Also



    • Related Articles

    • Setting up Email Sharing Permissions

      Emails exchanged with customers contain important information that may be required for reference by several other teams who are involved in the business process. For example, a contract agreement exchanged with a firm may be required by the legal ...

    • Setting up Data Sharing Rules

      By default, access rights to CRM records is set as private so that the record owner and his/her manager can oversee the CRM data. However, using the Data Sharing Rules, you can extend the access rights to users belonging to other roles and groups. ...

    • Approving Records

      The import feature and Web forms have an option to enable manual approval of records. When this option is enabled, records imported or gathered through web forms are not added directly to the modules. They need to be approved first for other users to ...

    • Navigating Records

      Navigate primarily means the process of moving back and forth within the records. Navigation in Zoho CRM allows easy movement between records; provides options to choose the number of records to be displayed in one page; and saves time in accessing ...

    • Search Records

      The search option helps locating specific information or specific records without having to go through the entire list of records, thus saving time in finding records. The different search options available in Zoho CRM are: Search by Alphabets Search ...