Manage Project Security with Page Layouts and Field-Level Security

When managing a project, you may need to manage information that not every user should see. For example, you may want to manage the ROI on your project, but limit the visibility of the project costs to your senior executive team.

You can manage the visibility of fields in Salesforce using page layouts and field-level security.

Within Salesforce, page layouts control the layout and organization of buttons, fields, Visualforce, custom links, and related lists. They also help determine which fields are visible, read only, and required.

Field-level security allows you to restrict users’ access to view and edit fields. You can limit access to those fields across your organization, including the ability to view the fields in reports, search results, list views, related lists, email templates, and mail merge templates.

Page layouts and field level security work together to allow you to set up views that are relevant to each user profile.

Page Layouts

Page layouts are used to control the look of the edit and detail view pages in Salesforce. When a user views a record or edits a record, the fields that you place on the page layout will be visible. You can also edit the field properties, including setting the field to be read-only or required from the page layout.

Detail View

Edit View

Page layouts not only control what fields you can see and where on the page it is placed, it also controls the organization of buttons, Visualforce, custom links, actions, and related lists.

Field-Level Security

While you can use page layouts to display or hide fields on detail and edit pages, users may still be able to access those fields by other means, including reports, search results, list views, and using the API. For fields that require a higher level of security, you should use field-level security to restrict all means of accessing the field.

It is important to note that field-level security doesn’t prevent searching on the values in a field. When search terms match field values protected by field-level security, the associated records are returned in the search results without the protected fields and their values.

Field level security will always supersede the page layout. For example, if a field is required in the page layout and read-only in the field-level security settings, the field-level security dictates that the field will be read only for the user.

Salesforce Security

When used in conjunction with one another, page layouts and field-level security provide privacy and protection for your records.

Use field-level security to restrict users’ access to fields, and then use page layouts to organize the detail and edit pages within tabs.

For the highest level of data security, preventing users from viewing or editing records or field values that they shouldn’t, you can use any combination of sharing rules, field-level security, page layout field properties, validation rules, object permissions, and Visualforce pages.

Using Page Layouts in Cloud Coach

Within Cloud Coach projects, you may want to add additional fields to the layout. To do this we need to navigate to the Setup area in Salesforce.

From the left-hand menu, navigate to the object and then page layouts.

To select a standard object, such as account, opportunity, or contact, Click on Customize, and then select the Object, then click on Page Layouts. You can also search for the object in the quick search box.

From the list displayed, select the item you’d like to edit from the Objects list.

Objects may have more than one page layout. Select the layout you want to edit and click edit.

Salesforce has a drag-and-drop tool for editing page layouts: the enhanced page layout editor. The enhanced page layout editor provides an easy to use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface. This tool makes it easy to edit page layouts.

Within the page layout editor select the Element you would like to add to the page. The element could be a field, button, action, related list, or a chart.

When you select the element, a list of available items will appear. You can then drag the field, related list, or chart from the list and onto your layout.

If you have added a new field you will then have the option of making it read only or required.

If you add a related list you can select which columns to include in the list within the settings of the related list. To access the settings click on the wrench icon.

Managing Field-Level Security

You can use either a permission set or a profile to manage field-level security. You will need to create the permission set or profile first, and then we can update the field-level security.

Edit Profile
To edit a profile, navigate to the Setup area.

Select Manage Users, then Profiles.

Click on the profile you would like to edit.

Within the field-level security area there will be two options: standard field-level security or custom field-level security. This refers to the whether the object is a custom object or a standard object in Salesforce.

Cloud Coach projects are custom objects, so you will find Projects listed under the custom field-level security section. Click on View, then Edit.

You can now check the box beside each field to make it visible or read only. If neither field is checked then the user will be unable to see the field.

Edit Permission Sets
Permission set editing is also found within setup

Select manage Users, then Permission Sets.

Select the permission set you would like to edit.

Now click on Object Settings. This will take you to the list of objects; both standard object and custom objects will be displayed.

Select Projects to view the Cloud Coach projects fields.

Click on Edit to change the field-level security settings.

You can then check the box to allow users to read or edit the field. If neither field is checked then the user will be unable to see the field.

By using page layouts and field-level security, you can control the organization of detail and edit pages for your users, add or remove buttons from pages, establish unique page layouts for different business situations, and restrict users’ access to specific fields.

AUTHOR

Brandi Johnson

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