When a Salesforce user reports they can’t see a record, the root cause usually lies in a combination of object permissions, organization-wide defaults, and sharing rules. Administration teams should treat this as a systematic diagnostic process rather than guesswork.
Start by confirming the profile and permission set grant at least Read access to the object. Missing object-level permissions is the most common first blocker before any sharing logic even applies.
Next, check organization-wide defaults (OWD). If OWD is set to Private, visibility depends entirely on sharing rules, role hierarchy, or manual grants layered on top.
Manual sharing and sharing rules often explain edge cases where a user should see a record but doesn’t. Review criteria-based and owner-based rules, plus any sharing sets for community users.
A reliable technique is the reproduce-as-user approach using Login As. This lets admins confirm the exact record access a user experiences, rather than relying on assumptions from the admin’s own elevated view.
Don’t overlook field-level security (FLS) and page layouts, since these can make records technically visible but functionally unusable. Report discrepancies across users frequently trace back to FLS misconfigurations rather than sharing alone.
References: Salesforce Help – Troubleshoot Object and Record Access, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000232310&language=en_US&type=1&utm_source=openai; Salesforce Help – Report Record Count Differences, https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000386455&language=en_US&type=1&utm_source=openai; Admin.Salesforce.com – Testing Access with SOQL, https://admin.salesforce.com/?p=190430&utm_source=openai; Salesforce Ben – Admin’s Toolkit, https://www.salesforceben.com/an-admins-toolkit-for-debugging-declarative-issues-in-salesforce/; YouTube – Sharing and Visibility, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeJdDaWvU1Y