Controlled by Parent organization-wide default
Key Takeaway
With Controlled by Parent, a child record has no sharing setting of its own, so a user's access to it follows their access to the parent record it is linked to.
Organization-wide defaults (OWDs) set the baseline access users have to records they don't own. Controlled by Parent is an OWD setting that applies to detail records in master-detail relationships and to some standard child records.
How Controlled by Parent works
For most objects, the OWD choices are:
- Private
- Public Read Only
- Public Read/Write
- Controlled by Parent
Private, Public Read Only, and Public Read/Write each set access for the object's own records. Controlled by Parent instead ties a record to its parent, so a user can view, edit, or delete the child record if they can do the same action on the parent.
For example, imagine a contact linked to the Acme account. A user can edit that contact only if they can also edit the Acme account.