Some of the biggest sections in the latest Salesforce interview questions are dedicated to profiles and roles in Salesforce. It is mainly because there is a lot of confusion around these concepts, their use, and their position in a Salesforce Admin`s operation.
In this article, we shall talk about Profiles and Roles in Salesforce, their hierarchy, and their functions.
What are Profiles in Salesforce?
It might be the first thing you see in any Salesforce interviews questions and answers list. Technically, a Profile in Salesforce is a sort of every user`s avatar – a block with information about the user, the permits, and the access level that they have.
Every user in Salesforce can be assigned only one Profile for the whole time of operation within one organization.
Profiles are defined and distinguished by a user`s function in the company. There can be profiles for the Sales team, Marketing experts, Salesforce Admins, Developers, etc.
There are 2 types of profiles in Salesforce:
- Standard profiles – they are assigned to every user automatically and cannit be deleted. Standard profiles contain all the basic permissions for the available objects
- Custom profiles – those profiles are created independently from users and then users are assigned to them. Unlike Standard profiles in Salesforce, Custom ones can easily be manipulated and even deleted when they become irrelevant or there are no users at the moment that can be assigned to them.
What are the Roles in Salesforce?
Another thing that constantly appears in the latest Salesforce interview questions is the definition of roles in Salesforce.
Roles in Salesforce are record-level visibility access levels available for a user. In other words, roles define who and what can see in the Salesforce organization at the moment.
Each object in Salesforce has a certain visibility setting. A user can see this object only if their role fits these settings. In certain cases, one user can see both their own and another`s object. This is called Role Hierarchy.
Role hierarchy is a tool that helps to control and adjust visibility access in the organization. The higher the role is the more visibility potential the user will have. There can be temporarily assigned roles in the case of management, for example, one needs to involve one of the employees in a certain project or discussion.
Managers will always have access to all the data of their employees. Another important feature is that users that constantly need or require the same access level can be grouped regardless of their profile status.
What is the difference between Profiles and Roles in Salesforce?
And of course, there comes the natural question about the difference between Roles and profiles in Salesforce. This question also frequently appears in the Salesforce interview questions and answers checklists.
While roles and profiles in Salesforce may look like the same thing at the first sight, there are some critical differences between the two matters:
- Roles are record-level access, while Profiles are object and field-level access;
- Roles act according to hierarchy data, while Profiles don`t have any hierarchy;
- Roles are built as a pyramid where the user of a higher rank gets access to more data, while profiles are like circles that connect users with the same function;
- Roles depend on a profile, but profiles are created independently from the roles assigned;
- A profile is a mandatory matter for any user in Salesforce while roles are not.
Roles and profiles in Salesforce are the most frequent matters in the latest Salesforce interview questions since they belong to a data security segment that is crucial for any company`s successful operation. Make sure to include this segment in your preparation for the Salesforce job interview and follow the latest updates and automation trends in Salesforce as they revolve around this chapter today.
