Learn Lightning: Create and Edit Permission Sets

Ready to learn more about how to be a Lightning Admin? So far in this Learn Lightning series, we’ve learned how to do a lot of common Admin tasks: how to use setup, create apps, create & clone users, create groups, create & edit objects, create reports, and create & edit profiles. Today I’m focusing on one of the best Admin tools: permission sets. Much like profiles, Lightning doesn’t change the way we use permission sets.

What are Permission Sets?

Permission sets allow us to layer accessibility for our users on top of profiles. I like to think about permission sets as keys that unlock doors to access data that users need to use. There are different keys to unlock the ability to use apps, objects, org-wide settings, and some other more advanced features. We can give these keys to groups of users. This is especially useful when users do more than one job function. For example, a sales manager who also runs local marketing campaigns would need access to both the sales app and the marketing app, but not all sales managers need to access the marketing app. I would give this specific sales manager a marketing permission set on top of their sales manager profile so they can access the marketing app.

Pro Tip: Use permission sets to regroup permissions on an app-specific level. – Belinda Wong, Product Manager

Create a New Permission Set

In previous Learn Lightning posts, I’ve created and edited my Wedding app. Now that I’ve got it set up to track vendors, guests, and have used profiles to limit what my parents can edit (no adding more guests, Mom!), I need to figure out how to give special access to my husband who needs to see more than everyone else. I want to give him access to see my Wedding Gifts app that I’m using to track the generous gifts we are receiving. To do that, I’m going to create a special permission set to allow him to access that Gifts app on top of accessing my Wedding app.

Step 1: From Setup, click User in the menu and select Permission Sets. You can also use the Quick Find.

Step 2: Create a new permission set and name it so that it is clear what the permission set allows.

Step 3: Set the accessibility for the permission set. Here I can choose which apps, objects, and more advanced settings this permission set allows. For my Wedding Gifts Manager permission set, I need to make sure I give access to view and edit the Wedding Gifts app.

Step 4: Assign the permission set to the appropriate users. I click the Manage Assignments button to assign this Wedding Gift Manager permission set to my husband so he can use the Wedding Gifts app.

And that’s it! Now he has access to both the Wedding Gifts app and the Wedding app, which no other user has. Using permission sets for this use case made it easy for me to grant additional access to one user while keeping other users’ access the same. I can also clone existing permission sets to adjust them for specific needs so I don’t have to create them from scratch. As you can see, there is no difference between using permission sets in Lightning vs. Classic, except for where you access them in the setup menu. There is so much power that comes with using permission sets, I’d love to know how you are using them! Share your use cases with me @gilliankbruce.

Advanced Admin Tip: In Spring ’17, there is a new field added to permission sets called “IsCustom” so you can now use SOQL to write a query to find all standard profiles in your org, since every profile is backed by a permission set that is the actual permissions assigned to the profile. – Belinda Wong, Product Manager

Check out the rest of the Learn Lightning series:

Part 1: Setup
Part 2: Create an App
Part 3: Create & Clone Users
Part 4: Create Groups
Part 5: Create & Edit Objects
Part 6: Create Reports
Part 7: Create & Edit Profiles