FAQ
Salesforce sharing and access, answered
Who Sees What is a Salesforce access and permission auditor, and the foundation of the Digadop security family. It shows exactly who can reach a record or field, and the precise grant that lets them.
The questions below start with how Salesforce itself decides access, layer by layer. Further down you will find a step-by-step access review for SOX, HIPAA, GDPR and ISO 27001, and a guide to comparing access tools.
Getting started
Who is Who Sees What for?
Salesforce admins, security and compliance teams, and anyone who has to answer “who can see this data, and why?” for an audit, a customer security review, or an incident. If you own a Salesforce org’s access model, it is for you.
What is Who Sees What?
Who Sees What is a Salesforce access and permission auditor. It maps who can reach a record or a field across every access layer (profiles, permission sets, roles, public groups, sharing rules, and more) and shows not just who has access but why they have it. The result is a prioritized, audit-ready picture of your exposure.
How does Who Sees What connect to my Salesforce org?
You connect your org with standard Salesforce OAuth. Who Sees What reads your access-configuration metadata and user directory to build the audit. The one change it can make is optional and happens only if an admin chooses to run it: a one-time setup that creates a least-privilege auditor permission set and, if you ask, assigns it to your integration user. You can connect a production org or a sandbox, and you can disconnect at any time.
Does Who Sees What work with other CRMs or systems besides Salesforce?
No. Who Sees What is built specifically for Salesforce. It connects only to Salesforce orgs (production or sandbox) and audits access within Salesforce. It does not connect to other CRMs, databases, or applications.
How do I get started, and how long does it take?
Connect your org and you will have an initial risk snapshot in under five minutes, no install required. Run a quick scan to begin.
Why is the AI assistant named Horton, and where does the name Horton come from?
The name Horton comes from Horton, a friendly, big-eared elephant who is known for hearing the small, quiet voices that everyone else misses, and that is why the Who Sees What AI assistant is named Horton. It is a fitting image for Who Sees What: a tool whose job is to surface who can see what in your Salesforce org, including the access that nobody else notices. Horton is an AI assistant, not a person.
Salesforce concepts
How does Salesforce decide who can see a record, and how does Who Sees What figure it out?
Salesforce access is decided in layers, and Who Sees What evaluates them in the same order Salesforce enforces them:
- Object access (CRUD). A user first needs Read on the object (granted through a profile or a permission set). Without object Read, nothing else matters, the user cannot see any record of that object.
- Record access (sharing). For users who have object access, record visibility is then decided by sharing: who owns the record, the org-wide default (OWD), the role hierarchy, sharing rules, manual and team shares, and “View All” or “Modify All” permissions that override sharing.
- Field-level security (FLS). Even when a user can see a record, field-level security can hide individual fields, so two people who both see a record may see different fields.
When Who Sees What answers a question, it tells you which of these layers is the deciding one, so you see not just whether someone has access but exactly why.
What is a permission set?
A permission set is a bundle of permissions (object access, field access, system permissions, and more) that you assign to individual users on top of their profile. Permission sets are additive: they can grant access but never take it away. Because any number of them can stack on a user, they are a common source of access that is broader than anyone intended. Who Sees What attributes access back to the specific permission set that granted it, so you can see exactly why a user has the access they do.
What is the difference between a profile and a permission set?
Every user has exactly one profile, which sets their baseline access. Permission sets are then layered on top to grant additional access to specific users without changing everyone on the profile. Salesforce is moving toward keeping profiles minimal and granting most access through permission sets and permission set groups. Who Sees What reads both, so when it explains who can see something, it names whether the access came from the profile or from a specific permission set.
What is field-level security (FLS)?
Field-level security controls which fields a user can see or edit, independent of their access to the record itself. A user can have access to a record but still be blocked from a sensitive field on it (such as a salary or a national ID), or the reverse. Because FLS is set per profile and per permission set, it is easy for a sensitive field to be exposed somewhere unexpected. Who Sees What maps field-level security so you can see who can reach regulated fields, and why.
Field exposure is judged on field-level security alone, which is the question admins actually mean when they ask “who can see this field”. You get the population whose FLS lets them read the field, separate from the record-level question of which rows they can reach. Keeping the two layers separate is what makes the answer usable: mixing them hides a field that is wide open at the FLS layer just because few people happen to own matching records today.
Fields also leak sideways through formulas. A formula field does not enforce the field-level security of the fields it references, so anyone who can read the formula can effectively read what it is built from. Who Sees What evaluates that, including cross-object formulas that surface a field from a related object, and reports a confirmed leak when at least one person who can see the formula cannot see the field behind it.
What is the role hierarchy?
The role hierarchy gives users access to records owned by people below them in the hierarchy, so managers can typically see their teams’ records. It is a powerful and often invisible source of access: someone high in the hierarchy may be able to see far more than their day-to-day job suggests. Who Sees What includes the role hierarchy when it traces who can reach a record, so inherited manager access is never a blind spot.
Pricing and plans
How much does Who Sees What cost?
Who Sees What starts with a free trial, so you can connect an org and see the full product before you pay. After the trial, pricing is per production org, billed monthly:
- Who Sees What Professional: $499 per org per month. Access visibility: the question library, the audit explorer, full risk-finding detail, exports, audit history, and on-demand scans.
- Who Sees What Enterprise: $1,299 per org per month. Everything above, plus who-can-edit audits, loading inactive users on demand, itemized external and Experience Cloud user detail, permission-change simulation, access-change tracking over time, org-wide access drift, scheduled report exports with email and signed-webhook delivery, and API report export (CSV, XLSX, PDF, JSON) via REST and MCP. Cross-org compare is coming soon to Enterprise and is not included yet. Extended audit history and retention, and priority support, onboarding, and an SLA, are coming soon to Enterprise too.
- Lynceon (coming soon): the next product in the Digadop security family. Where Who Sees What shows you the facts of access, Lynceon (coming soon) is designed to judge them and help you act, adding risk remediation, continuous monitoring, and code-security scanning. It is coming soon and not yet available for purchase; the planned price is $2,499 per org per month. Choose “Learn more” to follow it.
There is introductory pricing right now: 17% off with a one-year contract, 25% off with a two-year contract, and 33% off with a three-year contract, locked flat for the whole term and billed annually. For Who Sees What Professional that is $414.17 per month on a one-year term, $374.25 on a two-year term, and $334.33 on a three-year term; Who Sees What Enterprise is $1,078.17 on a one-year term, $974.25 on a two-year term, and $870.33 on a three-year term. See the pricing page for the current numbers and to start a free trial.
Do you offer refunds? What is your refund policy?
We offer a free trial first, so you can evaluate Who Sees What on your own org before you pay anything. After you sign up for a paid plan, we do not offer refunds. If you would rather not commit long-term, you can choose monthly service and pay month to month instead of committing to a longer term.
Is there a free trial?
Yes. Who Sees What begins with a free trial, so you can connect your org with Salesforce OAuth and run real audits before you decide. You start the trial yourself from the app: no sales call and nobody to email first.
There are two ways to trial. Without a credit card you get about 3 days to explore, and export stays locked on that path. Add a card and the trial runs about 10 days with export unlocked (CSV, multi-sheet Excel, and print-ready PDF), and it converts to a paid plan automatically when the trial ends unless you cancel first. Either way it is one trial per org.
When you are ready to buy, checkout is self-serve as well. You pick the edition and term and complete the purchase in the app.
When the trial ends you choose a plan: plans are tiered (see Pricing), so some detail like the full risk findings and export moves to a paid tier, but your work carries over.
Is Who Sees What priced per user or per org?
Per org, not per user. You pay one flat monthly price for each connected production org, and you can invite the admins on your team without paying for more seats. Who Sees What is an admin tool used by a few people, so per-org pricing keeps it simple and predictable: you are paying for visibility into the org, not for the number of people who look at it.
What is your cancellation policy? Can I cancel anytime?
On a month-to-month plan, you can choose to stop at any time. If you have already paid for the current month, that month is not refunded, but you keep access for the rest of that paid term. Committed terms cannot be cancelled: both a one-year and a multi-year contract remain in effect for the full term you agreed to, and prepaid fees are non-refundable, even if you stop using the service. If staying flexible matters to you, the month-to-month plan is the better fit.
Is there a contract or minimum term? Can I go month-to-month?
There is no minimum term required. Who Sees What is available month-to-month at the standard per-org rate, so you are not locked into a long contract. If you want a lower rate, you can optionally commit to a one-year term (17% off), a two-year term (25% off), or a three-year term (33% off), but that longer commitment is your choice, not a requirement.
What is the difference between Who Sees What and Who Sees What Enterprise?
Who Sees What Professional answers “who can see what, when I ask.” You use the audit explorer, the core question library, full risk-finding detail, exports, audit history, and on-demand scans.
Who Sees What Enterprise adds the parts that go beyond seeing access:
- who-can-edit audits for records, objects, and fields
- loading inactive (deactivated) users on demand, beyond the active-user audit
- itemized external, Experience Cloud, community, and guest-user detail
- permission-change simulation: what access would change if you changed a role, group, or sharing rule
- access-change tracking over time: what changed in a user’s access to a record since a date
- org-wide access drift: what changed in your org’s access model since a date, from snapshots a scheduled access change check takes; the check delivers its change report by email or to a signed webhook, by default only when access changed (a scheduled check, not continuous monitoring with alerting, which is Lynceon, coming soon)
- scheduled report exports: a question’s report on the schedule you set, delivered by email or to a signed webhook
- API report export (CSV, XLSX, PDF, JSON) via REST and MCP, with API credentials you create and revoke in the app
Connecting more than one org is not the dividing line. The multi-org roster and one-click switching are available on every plan, including the free trial. Cross-org compare is coming soon to Enterprise and is not included yet. Extended audit history and retention, and priority support, onboarding, and an SLA, are coming soon to Enterprise too.
What payment methods do you accept?
We accept invoice, purchase order (PO), and ACH. We also accept credit cards with no fee for monthly billing. If you would like to pay for an annual plan by credit card, a 3% convenience fee applies; you can avoid that fee by paying annually with ACH, invoice, or PO.
What is coming soon to Who Sees What Enterprise?
Three things are coming soon to Who Sees What Enterprise and are not included in any plan today. Cross-org compare, which compares two connected orgs’ access models in a single view, is coming soon. Extended audit history and retention are coming soon. Priority support, onboarding, and an SLA are coming soon. Integrations that feed a SIEM, data warehouse, or ticketing system also stay coming soon as built-in connectors; today you point a scheduled export’s signed webhook at an endpoint on your side.
Lynceon (coming soon) is a separate product, the next one in the Digadop security family, not part of Who Sees What Enterprise, and it is not yet available for purchase. Continuous monitoring with alerting is a Lynceon capability.
What Who Sees What Enterprise includes today: who-can-edit audits, permission-change simulation, access-change tracking over time, org-wide access drift from scheduled access snapshots, loading inactive users on demand, itemized external and Experience Cloud user detail, scheduled report exports with email and signed-webhook delivery, and API report export (CSV, XLSX, PDF, JSON) via REST and MCP.
Do you offer annual or multi-year billing?
Who Sees What is priced per production org and is billed monthly at the standard rate, with no commitment required. You can also commit for a longer term to lock in a lower flat rate for the whole term: a one-year commitment is 17% off, a two-year commitment is 25% off, and a three-year commitment is 33% off (introductory pricing). Committed terms bill annually. So you can stay month-to-month, or choose an annual or multi-year term for the discount. See Pricing for current rates.
Is there a setup or onboarding fee?
No. There is no setup or onboarding fee. You connect your org yourself with a Salesforce OAuth login, with no managed package to install, and you can start with a free trial.
What does Lynceon add on top of Who Sees What?
Lynceon is the next product in the Digadop security family, and it is coming soon. Where Who Sees What shows you the facts of access (who can see what and why), Lynceon (coming soon) is designed to judge those facts and help you act on them. The direction we are building toward includes:
- remediation guidance for each finding, so you know how to fix it
- continuous monitoring and scheduled scans
- code-security scanning across Apex and dependencies
- a security posture score and trend over time
- risk prioritization, so you fix the most important things first
- compliance mapping for your access posture
- threat and anomaly detection for unusual access patterns
Lynceon (coming soon) is a separate product. It is not yet available for purchase, and its capabilities are not sold today. Choose “Learn more” to follow it.
Do you offer a nonprofit or education discount?
We offer a 20% discount for charitable nonprofits. To qualify, you need to provide proof of charitable nonprofit status; being a nonprofit organization alone is not enough. We do not offer a discount for government or other public entities, so a public school, university, or government agency would not qualify, though a qualifying charitable nonprofit would.
How are sandboxes and multiple orgs priced?
Each production org you connect carries its own license. The multi-org roster and one-click switching are available on every plan, including the free trial, so connecting more than one org is not what makes Enterprise different.
Sandboxes attach to a licensed production org, and any non-production org (full, partial, or developer) counts as a sandbox. On Enterprise, the sandbox of your primary subscribed org is free, and a sandbox of any other org is billed at 50% of that org’s rate. On Professional, every sandbox is billed at 50% of the org’s rate.
What happens to my price at renewal? Can it go up?
For multi-year agreements, any price escalators are agreed up front and written into your contract when you sign, and they do not change during the contract term, so you know your pricing for the life of the agreement. On a month-to-month plan you are on the current standard rate with no long-term commitment. If locking in your pricing matters to you, a multi-year agreement with its agreed escalators is the way to do that.
What is the introductory pricing?
For a limited time, a longer contract earns a larger introductory discount off the per-org rate:
- one-year contract: 17% off
- two-year contract: 25% off
- three-year contract: 33% off
The rate is locked flat for the whole term, and committed terms bill annually. In dollars, Who Sees What Professional is $414.17 per month on a one-year term, $374.25 on a two-year term, and $334.33 on a three-year term; Who Sees What Enterprise is $1,078.17 on a one-year term, $974.25 on a two-year term, and $870.33 on a three-year term.
Month-to-month is at the standard rate. The discount applies to both Who Sees What Professional and Who Sees What Enterprise. See the pricing page for the current introductory rates.
Do you have a partner or reseller program, and can a consultant manage my org?
Not yet. Our partner and reseller program isn’t open for sign-up. If you’re a consultant or AppExchange partner and want to work with us, tell us through the contact page.
A consultant can already help with your org today. Each org carries one license, and access is separate from who pays for it. You can give your consultant a login to your licensed org, or a consultant can set up and pay for an org while you still log in. Either way the org is licensed once and never charged twice.
How is Who Sees What worth the price? What is the return on investment?
Our pricing is set to be fair, and based on our own market analysis it is one of the highest values available for what it does. The return on investment is naturally variable: the value to a given organization depends on factors like your security maturity, the number of employees, contractors, and third parties with access to your systems, how many integrations you run, your DevOps process, how sensitive your data is, and the impact a failed security audit or a breach would have on you.
For an organization with real exposure, getting a clear, audit-ready answer to who can see what across every layer can pay for itself the first time it catches something. Pricing is per production org, not per seat, so your whole team is covered, and every plan starts with a free trial, so you can see the value on your own org before you pay.
Using Who Sees What
How is Who Sees What different from Salesforce's own permission tools?
Salesforce Setup shows you access one piece at a time: a profile here, a sharing rule there, a permission set somewhere else. It does not answer the real question, which is “who can see this specific record or field, and through which path?” Who Sees What consolidates every access layer (profiles, permission sets, roles, groups, sharing rules, field-level security) into one answer and shows the reason for each grant. It turns a manual, multi-screen investigation into a single, audit-ready report.
What does a Who Sees What audit report include?
An audit gives you a prioritized view of exposure: overexposed profiles and permission sets, who can reach sensitive fields and objects, dormant access that outlived its purpose, and for any record or field the list of users who can see it with the reason each one can. Each finding comes with its severity, the affected users, and the reason for each grant, so your admin team knows exactly what is exposed and how.
Alongside the core audit you also get the exposure views most orgs have never run:
- Who can export, the bulk data-egress report: every user holding Export Reports, View All Data, API Enabled, or another permission that lets data leave the org, and the profile or permission set granting it.
- Connected app and OAuth inventory: every connected app with live OAuth authorizations in the org, who authorized it, how often and how recently it was used, and a flag on the ones that are dormant or were never used. It does not list the individual OAuth scopes each app holds.
- Sensitivity-ranked field exposure, so a widely-readable national ID sorts above a widely-readable industry code.
- Over-permissioned and dormant-access findings across the whole org, not just the object you happened to audit.
- A dependency map of the Apex, Flows, Visualforce, and formulas that touch an object, including cross-object formula exposure reported as a confirmed leak when a user who can see the formula cannot see the field behind it.
The result is concise and audit-ready, built to hand to security, compliance, or an auditor. Export it as CSV, as a multi-sheet Excel workbook (the first sheet carries the audit provenance), or as a print-ready PDF.
Can I run Who Sees What against a sandbox?
Yes. You can connect either a production org or a sandbox, so you can try Who Sees What against a sandbox first and run it against production when you are ready.
How do I find out who can see a specific record?
Ask the “Who can see this record?” question and give it the record. You can paste the record’s 15- or 18-character Salesforce Id, pick a recent record, or search for one by name, and Who Sees What returns every user who can see that record along with the reason each one has access. You can also ask “Who can edit this record?” to narrow the list to people with edit access.
The reasons cover the deciding grant: record owner, role hierarchy, an org-wide default, a sharing rule, a public-group or queue share, a “View All” permission, and relationship-derived sharing where access comes from a related record rather than this one (implicit parent sharing, implicit child sharing on a parent account, and person-account sharing). A small number of paths, such as some territory and team shares, are reported as granted by a mechanism that could not be itemized. We say so on the finding rather than guessing.
One thing worth being precise about: the list of who has access is authoritative, because it is checked against what Salesforce itself enforces. The why is our best explanation of that answer.
“Who can see this record?” is a free question on the trial. It answers at the record level: it tells you who can see the record and why.
What can Horton, the in-app assistant, actually do?
Horton is an AI assistant, not a person, and it is the way to get an answer without learning the product first. Ask in plain English, for example who can see this account or who can export contact data, and Horton runs the audit and shows the result with the reasoning behind it.
Three things make that work in a real org:
- It knows your schema. Horton reads your org’s own object metadata to work out which object you meant, so a custom object with an internal nickname resolves correctly instead of being guessed at from a generic list.
- It finds records for you. You do not need a Salesforce Id in your clipboard. Search by name and Horton matches against the records you are asking about, ranking the likely ones first rather than filtering out anything it is unsure of.
- It hands you to a person cleanly. Ask to talk to a human and the whole conversation travels with the request, along with a note on what you need, so the person who picks it up already has the context. You never have to retype your problem into an empty form.
The access analysis itself is computed by deterministic software from your org’s configuration. See what AI model Horton uses for the detail on that split.
How do I read a Who Sees What result?
Every answer leads with a plain verdict, then shows the “why” behind it.
- For “who can see” questions: you get the list of people who have access. Each person shows their access level (for example, Read or Edit) and the deciding reason they have it, with the full grant path when there is more than one step (for example, “Role hierarchy, because they are above the owner”).
- For “why can (or can’t) someone see this” questions: you get a yes or no verdict plus the single binding reason. When access is blocked, the binding reason is the one layer that stops it: no Read on the object, no record-level sharing, or field-level security hiding the field. When access is granted, the binding reason is the grant that provides it, followed by any other paths.
- Supporting evidence names the metadata behind the answer, such as the record owner, the org-wide default, and any groups, queues, or roles involved.
The verdict is the ground truth (it reflects what Salesforce actually enforces); the binding reason and full path explain it.
How long does a scan take?
It depends on the size of your Salesforce org. A simple scan can take a few seconds. For a large org, generating the full report may take as long as a few minutes.
Is there an org size limit? How many users or objects can Who Sees What handle?
There are no fixed org size limits. Who Sees What works with Salesforce orgs of any size. Larger orgs simply take longer to scan: a simple scan takes a few seconds, and for a large org, generating the full report may take as long as a few minutes.
Does Who Sees What work with Person Accounts?
Yes. A Person Account is a Salesforce record type that combines an Account and a Contact into a single record, and Who Sees What audits who can see Person Account records the same way it does for other objects. You see who has access to them and why.
Does Who Sees What have an API I can call from my CI/CD pipeline?
Yes, on Who Sees What Enterprise. Enterprise orgs create and revoke their own API credentials in the web app (organization menu, then API access) and call the REST API with the credential as a Bearer token, so a pipeline can run audits against your org and export reports as CSV, XLSX, PDF, or JSON. Professional does not include API access. See Pricing for the plans.
Does Who Sees What support MCP? Can I connect it to an AI agent like Claude?
Yes, on Who Sees What Enterprise. Who Sees What has a hosted MCP server at https://whoseeswhat.com/mcp: create a credential in the web app (organization menu, then API access), point your MCP client at that address, and your AI agent can run audits, search for users, objects and records, compare orgs, and export reports. Professional does not include MCP access. See the MCP server reference for the tools, and Pricing for the plans.
Do you have a mobile app?
Today Who Sees What runs in your web browser, so you can use it on any device that has a browser. There is no dedicated Who Sees What mobile app: no iOS app, no Android app, and nothing to download. A cross-product mobile effort is on our roadmap and it names Who Sees What screens, but it is at intake and specification, so treat it as a direction rather than a date. Phones and tablets work through the browser today, with one caveat worth saying out loud: only the People table reflows, so the field detail, audit history and gallery preview tables are still desktop-width.
Which Salesforce editions does Who Sees What support?
Who Sees What connects through the standard Salesforce API, so it works with any edition that has API access enabled. That includes Enterprise, Unlimited, and Performance editions, as well as Developer edition. Professional edition works if your org has the API access add-on enabled.
The connecting user needs the API Enabled permission (along with View Setup and Configuration, View All Data, and Manage Users for a full org-wide audit). If you are unsure whether your edition has API access, your Salesforce administrator can confirm it.
Does Who Sees What work with custom objects?
Yes. Who Sees What audits access for both standard objects (such as Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and Cases) and custom objects, along with their custom fields. For any object, standard or custom, it evaluates the full access configuration that decides who can see a record: org-wide defaults, the role hierarchy, sharing rules, profiles, permission sets, and field-level security.
So you can ask who can see a given custom-object record and why, exactly as you would for a standard object.
Does Who Sees What cover Experience Cloud, communities, or guest users?
Yes, with Who Sees What Enterprise. Experience Cloud, community, and guest-user coverage is part of the Enterprise plan, so you can audit access for external-facing users alongside your internal ones, including how the Experience Cloud sharing model (such as sharing sets) grants access.
On the Professional plan this external exposure is detected and flagged, and the full details are available when you move up to Enterprise.
Security and data
What data does Who Sees What read and store?
Who Sees What reads your access-configuration metadata (profiles, permission sets, field-level security, org-wide defaults, sharing rules, roles, public groups, queues) and your user directory.
It stores the access metadata needed to build and retain your audit reports, the encrypted credential needed to re-read your configuration, and account plus usage telemetry. For the full detail, see our Data scope and handling page.
Where is my data hosted? What cloud or region is it in?
Who Sees What runs entirely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the United States, inside Digadop’s own AWS environment.
The one credential kept (the encrypted Salesforce refresh token behind the optional keep-me-signed-in feature) is encrypted at rest with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and never stored in plaintext. Connections use TLS, and every saved audit is isolated per Salesforce org with PostgreSQL row-level security, so one customer’s data is never readable in another customer’s session.
Is my data isolated from other customers? Is it multi-tenant safe?
Yes. Every record Who Sees What stores is keyed to your Salesforce organization id and isolated using PostgreSQL row-level security. That isolation is enforced at the database, because the application connects with a non-privileged database role, so one customer’s data can never be read by another customer’s session.
On top of that, what is stored (such as your encrypted Salesforce refresh token if you choose to stay signed in, and the fingerprints of risks you have ignored) is encrypted and scoped to your organization.
Do you sell or share my data with anyone?
No. Digadop does not sell your data, and does not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Who Sees What uses no analytics, advertising, or session-replay vendors.
We rely on a small, disclosed set of trusted sub-processors strictly to run the service: Amazon Web Services for hosting; GitHub only for the feedback you choose to submit through the in-product assistant (used for support triage); and Amazon Bedrock for Horton, the assistant, which only ever sees your typed question and public product documentation, never your Salesforce data. Each sub-processor is bound by our Data Processing Addendum, and we give at least 30 days notice before adding or replacing one. The current list is at /legal/sub-processors.
How is my data secured?
Your Salesforce refresh token is encrypted at rest with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and stored only in encrypted form; it is deleted when you sign out and on detected revocation of the connection. Audit-history snapshots, preferences, and account and telemetry data are retained while your account is active, for as long as needed to provide the Service, and you can ask us to delete them sooner at any time by emailing privacy@digadop.com. When you close your account, we delete your stored data, including backups, within a commercially reasonable period. See the Privacy Policy and Data scope and handling for more.
Does Who Sees What work with Government Cloud (GovCloud)? Are you GovCloud certified?
Who Sees What is not GovCloud certified, and is not currently in the certification process. GovCloud support is on our roadmap (planned), and Digadop describes the status of certifications accurately as it changes. If you have a Government Cloud or specific compliance requirement, reach the team through whoseeswhat.com/contact and we can walk through where that stands for your org.
Does Who Sees What use AI? Is my data sent to or used to train an AI model?
The access audit is computed by deterministic software, with no AI involved. Separately, Who Sees What offers an optional in-product assistant, Horton, that uses a third-party AI model (Amazon Bedrock) only to answer the product questions you type, drawing on our public product documentation. Your Salesforce data (your configuration, your user directory, and your records) is never sent to the AI model, and your data is never used to train any model. The questions you type to the assistant may be logged to improve the Service. See the Data scope and handling and Privacy Policy pages for detail.
What AI model does Horton use? And does Who Sees What use AI on my Salesforce data?
We’re happy to be transparent about this.
Horton, the in-product assistant, is built on large language models accessed through Amazon Bedrock. There isn’t one fixed model: the specific model varies by the type of request, because our products dynamically select the model best suited to each task (for example, a fast model for a simple classification, a more capable one for a detailed explanation). So “which model” depends on what you asked.
Just as important: Who Sees What does not use AI models to access or analyze your Salesforce data. Your access analysis, who can see which record or field, and why, is produced from your org’s configuration, not by an AI model. We use AI only to help you use the product: Horton answers questions about Who Sees What (like this one) and helps you navigate it.
Do you perform penetration testing?
Penetration testing is planned as part of Lynceon, Digadop’s dedicated Salesforce security product, which is coming soon. For security diligence on Who Sees What today, Digadop is happy to provide security materials to prospective customers under an appropriate confidentiality agreement (NDA). Reach the team through whoseeswhat.com/contact.
How do I revoke Who Sees What's access?
You can disconnect Who Sees What at any time, either from within the app or from Salesforce Setup (Connected Apps OAuth Usage), which immediately invalidates its access. Our Revoke access page walks through both paths step by step.
Is Who Sees What accessible? Do you have a VPAT?
We build to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. That is the bar most enterprise, government, education, and healthcare procurement teams ask for, and it is the standard behind Section 508 in the US, EN 301 549 in the EU, and AODA in Ontario.
In practice that means the audit interface is operable from the keyboard alone with a visible focus indicator, the interactive parts of a result (including the record-access sections you expand to see why someone has access) open and close in both directions and announce their state to a screen reader, text and interface elements meet the AA contrast ratios, images carry alternative text, and form fields carry real labels and readable error messages.
We do not use an accessibility overlay widget. Overlays claim instant compliance, do not achieve it, and have drawn regulatory action for saying otherwise. Accessibility is remediated in the product itself, and accessibility issues are tracked and fixed like any other defect rather than papered over at the surface.
If you need an accessibility conformance report (VPAT) for a procurement review, contact us and we will work through it with you.
Read more
How Salesforce decides who can see a record
Salesforce decides access in layers, so one setting rarely explains a result on its own. When a user can see a record they should not, or cannot see one they should, start with the org-wide default for that object. It sets the baseline that every other layer builds on.
Object-Level Access vs. Record-Level Access in Salesforce
Salesforce controls data access at two distinct layers that work together: object-level access and record-level access. Understanding the difference is essential for auditing who can see or modify data.
Object-level access determines whether a user can interact with a type of record at all. It is granted through profiles and permission sets using CRUD permissions (Create, Read, Update, Delete). If a user lacks Read permission on an object, they cannot see any records of that type, regardless of any sharing configuration. Object-level access is a prerequisite, it acts as a gate before record-level rules are even evaluated.
Record-level access determines which specific records a user can see within an object they already have access to. This is controlled by Salesforce's sharing model, which includes the org-wide default (OWD) setting for the object, role hierarchy, sharing rules, manual sharing, and other mechanisms. Even if a user has Read access to the Opportunity object, the sharing model governs exactly which Opportunity records appear to them.
The two layers are additive in restriction: a user needs both object-level permission and record-level access to reach a given record. Granting broad sharing without checking object permissions, or granting object permissions without considering the sharing model, can both lead to unexpected access outcomes.
This distinction matters directly for what Who Sees What audits. When investigating why a user can or cannot see a particular record, both layers must be examined, object permissions explain whether the door to the object exists, and sharing rules explain whether the user has a key to that specific record.
What are org-wide defaults (OWD)?
Org-wide defaults set the baseline level of access to each object's records for users who do not own them: Private, Public Read Only, or Public Read/Write, among others. Everything else (role hierarchy, sharing rules, manual sharing, teams) only opens access up from that baseline. Getting OWD right is the foundation of a sound sharing model, so Who Sees What starts from your OWD and then shows every mechanism that widens access from there.
For a longer walk-through, read The Salesforce access layers, explained and Org-wide defaults: the floor of your sharing model.
Sharing beyond the record owner
Sharing rules come in two main kinds. Owner-based rules share records according to who owns them, and criteria-based rules share records according to field values on the record. Either way a rule only adds access: it cannot make a record more private than its org-wide default.
What is a sharing rule in Salesforce, and why does it matter?
A sharing rule grants access to records beyond what the org-wide defaults allow, usually by opening records owned by one group of users to another group. Sharing rules are one of the easiest ways for access to quietly widen over time, because they grant access in addition to everything else (profiles, permission sets, roles). That is exactly why Who Sees What traces them: when it shows who can see a record, a sharing rule is often the reason, and it is the layer admins most often forget to check.
Manual Sharing and Account/Opportunity/Case Teams as Record-Access Grants
Beyond the automatic sharing rules that flow from org-wide defaults, role hierarchies, and criteria-based sharing rules, Salesforce provides several mechanisms that allow individual users or administrators to extend access to specific records on a one-off basis. Manual sharing and account, opportunity, and case teams are the most common of these.
Manual sharing allows a record owner (or an administrator) to grant read or read/write access to a specific record to a specific user, group, or role. Because it is applied record by record and person by person, manual sharing is often invisible in org-wide configuration reviews, it exists only on the individual record itself. This makes it particularly important to audit: a user may have access to a sensitive record solely because someone clicked "Share" years ago, with no broader policy governing that decision.
Account teams let a set of users be associated with a specific account, each with a defined level of access (read or read/write) to the account and its related contacts, opportunities, and cases. Opportunity teams work similarly, scoping a group of users to a single opportunity with defined access levels. Case teams apply the same concept to cases, allowing a set of users to be associated with a specific case record, each with a defined access level. Team membership across all three types is typically managed by the record owner or an administrator, and access granted through teams is additive, it sits on top of whatever access the user already holds from other mechanisms.
For visibility auditing purposes, all four mechanisms matter because they can grant access that is not predictable from an org's sharing rules or role hierarchy alone. A user's effective access to a record may be elevated by any combination of these grants, and understanding the full picture requires inspecting the record-level sharing detail, not just the org-level configuration. Who Sees What surfaces these grants so you can see exactly which users have access to a given record and which mechanism, manual share, account team, opportunity team, or case team, is responsible.
How does account ownership affect who can see its contacts and opportunities?
Salesforce applies implicit sharing around accounts. The owner of an account (and anyone above them in the role hierarchy, when hierarchy access applies) automatically gets access to that account's child records, such as its contacts, opportunities, and cases, even if those child objects have a more restrictive org-wide default. The reverse also applies: a user who can see a child record like an opportunity is implicitly granted read access to its parent account so the record makes sense in context. This implicit sharing is automatic and is not written as a sharing rule, which is why access sometimes appears that no explicit rule seems to grant. Who Sees What accounts for implicit sharing when it works out who can see a record, so this access is reflected in your results.
External users in Experience Cloud sites reach records through their own mechanisms, which you configure in Setup under the Experience Cloud settings.
Unauthenticated guest users on those sites have their own variant of sharing rule, the guest user sharing rule.
What is a sharing set in Salesforce?
A sharing set is an Experience Cloud (community and portal) feature that grants external users, such as customer-community or partner users, access to records that are related to their own account or contact. Rather than writing sharing rules for each external user, a sharing set says "let these external users see records linked to their account or contact." Sharing sets are a common way external users gain access, and that access is easy to lose track of. Who Sees What includes external users in its analysis and labels them as external, so access granted through a sharing set surfaces when you audit who can see a record.
More on this layer: Sharing rules: their power, and their risk.
Permissions that widen access
The high-privilege system permissions are granted in Setup, on a profile or a permission set. View All Data and Modify All Data bypass the sharing model entirely, which makes the people who hold them one of the biggest sources of broad access in an org.
Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups
A permission set is a collection of settings and permissions that can be assigned to one or more users to grant them additional access beyond what their profile provides. Profiles establish a baseline of permissions, and permission sets layer on top of that baseline, they can only add access, never remove it. A user can hold multiple permission sets simultaneously, and their effective permissions are the union of everything granted by their profile and all assigned permission sets.
A permission set group bundles multiple permission sets together into a single assignable unit. Instead of assigning several individual permission sets to a user, an administrator can assign one permission set group that encompasses all of them. This makes managing access for users with similar job functions more efficient. Permission set groups also support a concept called muting permission sets, which can suppress specific permissions within the group without modifying the underlying permission sets themselves.
From an access-auditing perspective, this layered model means that understanding what a user can actually do or see requires looking at their profile and every permission set and permission set group assigned to them. A user may appear to have limited access based on their profile alone, but permission sets can significantly expand what records, fields, objects, and features they can reach. This is precisely the kind of cumulative, multi-source access that Who Sees What is designed to surface, showing the full picture of why a particular user can see a particular record, including contributions from permission sets and permission set groups.
For details on configuring permission sets and permission set groups, refer to Salesforce's official documentation.
View All Data Versus Modify All Data
Two powerful Salesforce system permissions are easy to confuse, and Who Sees What is careful to keep them distinct in its results. View All Data grants read access to all records of the objects it covers, but only read. Modify All Data grants read plus edit and delete on those records.
When the product explains why a user can see a record, it attributes read-only access to View All Data and attributes edit or delete access to Modify All Data. This prevents a common mistake: assuming that someone who can see everything can also change everything. The access level shown for each person reflects this difference.
Because Modify All Data is so broad, having many users who hold it is itself worth attention. Who Sees What flags an unusually high number of Modify All Data holders as a potential risk, so administrators can review whether that many people need full read, edit, and delete across the org.
Read next: Permission sets vs profiles: where over-access usually hides and Field-level security: the layer people forget.
When too many people can see a record
Wide visibility often comes from where a user sits rather than from a deliberate sharing decision. On objects where the role hierarchy applies, one role placed high in the tree can reach records owned across many teams or regions, with no sharing rule pointing at it.
Why can everyone in my org see this account or record?
When everyone can see a record, it almost always comes down to one of a few access paths: the object's org-wide default is set to Public (Read or Read/Write), a sharing rule or public group opens it widely, the role hierarchy rolls access up to many users, or a broad permission like View All Data or View All on the object grants it. Implicit sharing (for example access to a child record granting read on its parent account) can also widen visibility. To see exactly which of these is responsible in your org, run an audit on that record in Who Sees What: it lists every user who can see it and names the specific reason for each, so you can pinpoint and fix the path that is too broad.
Related reading: The role hierarchy is not an org chart, The quiet ways Salesforce access creeps wider and How to answer 'who can see this record?' in five minutes.
Audit logs, MFA and recent Salesforce security changes
Salesforce's stricter MFA and report-export enforcement raises the stakes on knowing which users in your org actually hold bulk data-export permissions. The entries below separate the questions these controls answer from the question of who can reach your data.
Why not just use the Salesforce Setup Audit Trail?
They answer different questions. The Salesforce Setup Audit Trail is a log of configuration changes: which administrator changed which setting, and when, over roughly the last six months. It tells you what changed, not who can see your data. Who Sees What answers the access question instead: given your current configuration, who can see a specific object, field, or record right now, who cannot, and what could quietly expose it, evaluated across all the access layers (licenses, object permissions, field-level security, and the record sharing model) together. The audit trail cannot tell you effective access, because access is the combined result of many settings, not any single change. Use the audit trail to see what was changed; use Who Sees What to see who can actually see what, and why.
Salesforce's report-export step-up authentication is now enforced in production in 2026: the primary report-action step-up control reached production orgs on 2026-07-01, within the broader 2026 phishing-resistant-MFA and report-export enforcement wave. Internal users must complete an additional MFA step-up challenge to export a report once a configurable window has passed since their last challenge (default 120 minutes). Orgs with Salesforce Shield or Event Monitoring get an auto-created Transaction Security Policy that triggers on report exports over 10,000 records. This raises the stakes on knowing which users in an org actually hold bulk data-egress capability. WhoSeesWhat's who-can-bulk-export report surfaces the holders of bulk-egress permissions (Export Reports, View All Data, Weekly Data Export, bulk API access) and the grant path behind each holder.
Salesforce Security Center is free now, so why would I pay for Who Sees What?
Salesforce Security Center Essentials is included with Enterprise, Unlimited, and Performance licenses and requires the View Security Center Pages permission. Its seven published metrics cover Health Check, Third-Party Integrations, and IP Ranges. Record-level and field-level access resolution, who can see what and the exact grant behind it, is what Who Sees What adds, so the two do not overlap. Essentials being included does not mean full Security Center is free; Salesforce still prices full Security Center through sales.
How to run a Salesforce access review for SOX, HIPAA, GDPR or ISO 27001
Whichever framework the review serves, the access part of it asks one question: does each person have only the access they need?
What changes from one framework to the next is the data in scope. A SOX review looks at who can see and who can change financial data. A HIPAA review confirms that access to protected health information is limited to the right people. A GDPR review looks at who inside your org can see personal data, which is a separate task from answering a data subject's request for a copy of their own data.
1. List the objects and fields that hold the regulated data
Start from the data, not from the users. Name the objects and the individual fields that hold financial data, protected health information or personal data, because the review is about who can reach those specifically.
2. Check object access first
For each object in scope, find who has Read, and who can edit or delete, through their profile and permission sets. A user without Read on an object cannot see any of its records, whatever the sharing settings say, so object access is the first gate.
3. List the holders of the permissions that bypass sharing
List everyone who holds View All Data or Modify All Data, find which profile or permission set grants it, and decide for each person whether it is warranted.
Check the object-level View All permission on each object in scope too, since it opens every record of that object in the same way.
4. Trace record-level sharing
Work through each layer that can open a record: the org-wide default, the role hierarchy, sharing rules and public groups, implicit sharing, and code that can bypass sharing. A user's access to a single record can come from several of these at once, so tracing it by hand across every record and user is a lot of careful work.
Manual shares need a separate look. They exist only on the individual record, so a review of org-wide configuration does not show them, and a user may hold access to a sensitive record because someone clicked Share years ago.
5. Check field-level security on the sensitive fields
Seeing a record does not mean seeing every field on it. Check field-level security on each field in scope: when a user's profile and permission sets disagree, the most permissive setting applies, and a page layout that hides a field does not enforce security. Field-level security is the control that counts.
6. Remove what is not needed, then check again
Make the changes in Salesforce Setup: adjust the profile or permission set, or deactivate or freeze a user to cut off their access. Then run the same checks again to confirm the result.
Pay particular attention to dormant access that outlived its purpose. It is exactly what a least-privilege review is meant to catch.
7. Record the method along with the result
Auditors can ask how you reached your answer, not only what it was, so keep the method alongside the list of who has access and why.
To explain what changed between two reviews, the Setup Audit Trail lists which administrator changed which setting and when, over roughly the last six months.
By framework
Who Sees What is a Salesforce access and permission auditor: it shows exactly who can reach a record or field, and the precise grant that lets them. How it fits SOX, HIPAA and GDPR, and Digadop's certification status, are answered below.
Does Who Sees What help with SOX or financial controls?
Who Sees What helps with the access-review side of SOX and similar financial controls. It shows who can see and change financial data in your Salesforce org, across every access layer, and produces an audit-ready report of who has access and why. That is the kind of evidence an access-control review calls for. It does not replace your overall SOX program or your auditors: it gives your team a fast, repeatable, provable answer to who can reach regulated data.
Can Who Sees What help with HIPAA compliance?
Who Sees What does not make your organization HIPAA compliant, and it is not a HIPAA certification. What it does is help with the access-control side of HIPAA: it shows who can see protected health information (PHI) across every Salesforce access layer, so you can confirm that access to PHI is limited to the right people and catch access that is too broad.
The audit-ready report (who can reach a record or field and why, each with a suggested fix) is the kind of evidence a HIPAA access review calls for. You and your compliance team still own the overall program. Who Sees What gives you clear, repeatable answers about access to regulated data.
Does Who Sees What help with GDPR data access requests?
Who Sees What is not a GDPR compliance certification, but it helps with the access side of GDPR. It shows who within your Salesforce org can see personal data, across every access layer, so you can confirm that access to personal data is limited appropriately and demonstrate it in an audit-ready form.
Note this is about who can access personal data in your org, which is different from fulfilling a data subject's request for a copy of their own data. Your team owns the GDPR program. Who Sees What gives you clear, repeatable answers about who can access regulated personal data.
Are you ISO 27001 certified? Do you have HIPAA, PCI, or other compliance certifications?
Who Sees What does not currently hold ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI, or similar certifications, and Digadop does not claim certifications it does not hold. SOC 2 is on the roadmap and GovCloud support is planned. Digadop describes the status of certifications and attestations accurately as it changes.
Separately, Who Sees What is engineered to be safe to connect: least-privilege access, per-tenant isolation, credentials encrypted with AWS Key Management Service (KMS), and hosted in the United States on AWS. Digadop is happy to provide security diligence materials to prospective customers under an appropriate confidentiality agreement (NDA).
Comparing Salesforce access and permission tools
Feature lists make access tools look alike. Four questions separate them more clearly, and you can ask them of any tool, including ours.
- What question does it answer? A score of your security settings, a log of what users did, a history of configuration changes, and an answer about who can reach a record or field today are four different outputs. Access is the combined result of many settings rather than any single change, so make sure the output you buy is the one your reviewer needs.
- Does it resolve access per person? A report of what each profile or permission set grants is not the same as a list of the people who can reach a field. A user's effective permissions are the union of their profile and every permission set and permission set group assigned to them, so a per-person answer has to combine all of them.
- Which layers does it cover? One record can be reached through the org-wide default, the role hierarchy, sharing rules, public groups, profiles and permission sets, field-level security, implicit sharing, and code that can bypass sharing. Ask which of these a tool evaluates, and whether it names the one that gives each person access.
- What does it need in your org, and what do you get out? Ask what it installs, what it is able to change, and whether its output is something you can hand to an auditor as evidence.
Who Sees What is a Salesforce access and permission auditor: it shows exactly who can reach a record or field, and the precise grant that lets them. The entries below set it beside specific tools by name. Start with the overview, then read the entry for the tool you use today or are evaluating.
How does Who Sees What compare to other tools? What makes it different?
Who Sees What answers who can reach a specific record or field, and why, across every native Salesforce sharing layer (profiles, permission sets, roles, public groups, sharing rules, org-wide defaults, and field-level security), as an audit-ready exposure report for the Salesforce admin, RevOps, and compliance buyer.
To be fair and accurate: a few security-led platforms (notably Varonis, and Salesforce-owned Own Secure) also offer a per-record who-and-why view, so that capability on its own is not unique to us. Who Sees What's honest edge is the combination: the fullest plain-language labeling of every native layer in the per-record report (including org-wide defaults, public groups, manual and implicit sharing, and account and case teams named per user); no managed package to install; an audit-ready report rather than a posture score or dashboard; and a focused per-production-org price aimed at the admin and compliance team rather than an enterprise security deployment.
Last verified October 18, 2026
Tools from Salesforce
Salesforce Security Center, Salesforce Health Check, Salesforce Optimizer, Salesforce Shield Event Monitoring, and the Sharing "Why?" button in Salesforce.
How does Who Sees What compare to Salesforce Security Center?
Security Center gives a strong multi-org view of system permissions and who holds them, and its extension package (free to existing Security Center customers) now reaches down to object, field and record access too. Who Sees What's edge is the output and footprint: a single audit-ready report that names the deciding sharing layer in plain language for one org at a time, aimed at the Salesforce admin and compliance buyer rather than a security-team console.
Last verified October 18, 2026
How is Who Sees What different from Salesforce Health Check?
They answer different questions. Salesforce Health Check scores your org's security settings (password policies, session settings, and similar configuration) against a baseline and flags settings that drift from recommended values. Who Sees What answers who can actually see what: it computes effective record and field access across profiles, permission sets, sharing rules, the role hierarchy, and more, and shows who can reach a given record or field and why.
Health Check is about configuration hygiene. Who Sees What is about effective access. The two are complementary.
How does Who Sees What compare to Salesforce Optimizer?
Salesforce retired Optimizer (Winter '26 on Hyperforce orgs, Summer '26 everywhere else); Org Check, a free Salesforce Labs app, is its successor and offers a similar hygiene scan for things like unused permission sets. Who Sees What is the depth tier above that: who can actually reach a given record or field, and exactly why, across every sharing layer.
Last verified October 18, 2026
How does Who Sees What compare to Salesforce Shield Event Monitoring?
Shield's Event Monitoring shows what users did, the activity log. Who Sees What shows what users can reach and why, the access map. They are complementary: the map plus the log is the full story.
Last verified July 2, 2026
How is Who Sees What different from Salesforce's built-in Sharing "Why?" button?
Salesforce's Sharing button answers who can see one record and why, for an admin, one record at a time. Who Sees What answers it across your whole org, adds field-level access, and turns it into a prioritized, audit-ready report. No SOQL is required.
Last verified October 18, 2026
Other vendors
Elements.cloud Permissions Explorer, Metazoa Snapshot, AppOmni, Varonis, Spin.AI, Obsidian Security, Sonar, Strongpoint and Salto.
How does Who Sees What compare to Elements.cloud Permissions Explorer?
Elements.cloud explains who has access and why at the profile and permission-set level, and does it well. Who Sees What extends the same who-and-why down through the record-sharing layers (org-wide defaults, role hierarchy, sharing rules, and public groups) into one exposure report.
Last verified July 2, 2026
How does Who Sees What compare to Metazoa Snapshot?
Metazoa is a broad, write-capable admin toolbox with good permission reporting. Who Sees What is a focused auditor that produces one prioritized record and field exposure report.
Last verified October 18, 2026
How does Who Sees What compare to AppOmni, Falcon Shield (CrowdStrike), or Own Secure?
These SaaS-security platforms inventory Salesforce permissions as part of broad, security-team posture management, and some (notably Salesforce-owned Own Secure) also offer a per-record access view.
Who Sees What answers the narrower, deeper question for the admin and compliance buyer: who can reach this exact record or field and why, named across every layer, as an audit (Falcon Shield, by contrast, is positioned around detection plus automated remediation), without an enterprise-platform footprint.
Last verified July 2, 2026
How does Who Sees What compare to Varonis?
Varonis is a powerful, security-led data-security platform that also maps Salesforce access, including a per-record view, so it is a genuine overlap, not something we do that it cannot.
Who Sees What is purpose-built for the Salesforce admin and compliance team: it names every native sharing layer in plain language, and it produces an audit-ready report without an enterprise security deployment or its pricing.
Last verified October 18, 2026
How does Who Sees What compare to Spin.AI or Obsidian?
These give you a Salesforce posture score and misconfiguration checks. Who Sees What answers a different question: for a specific record or field, who can see it and through which access path.
Last verified July 2, 2026
How does Who Sees What compare to Sonar or Arovy?
Sonar (now Arovy) tells you which fields are sensitive. Who Sees What tells you who can reach them, and why. Use them together.
Last verified July 2, 2026
How does Who Sees What compare to Strongpoint, Salto, or CodeScan?
These are governance, DevOps, and code-quality tools focused on change and metadata management. Who Sees What is a dedicated access auditor focused on the record and field who-and-why.
Last verified July 2, 2026
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Comparisons are based on publicly available information and were last verified on the date shown.