# Record visibility — who sees which records

_Other Tools_

Settings > Permissions > Visibility sets, for each kind of record (contacts, companies, deals, tasks, conversations, meetings, calendar events), whether members see only their own, everyone can view them, or everyone can edit them. Owners and Admins always see and edit everything, whatever is set here. Start from a preset (Small team, Growing or Structured) and fine-tune each type afterwards. Every change shows who gains and who loses access before you apply it, and is logged on the Audit tab. Until you change anything, every type is "Everyone can edit", which is how CRMown has always worked.

## Steps
1. Open Settings and click the 🔐 Permissions tab (Owners and Admins), then Visibility.
2. The first time, pick a preset. The card that fits your number of seats is marked Recommended. Small team: everyone sees and edits everything. Structured: records are private to their owner and everyone can look up companies. Growing (each team sees its own records) needs Teams, which is not available yet.
3. To fine-tune, change the mode next to a record type: Private to owner, Everyone can view (only the owner edits), or Everyone can edit.
4. Read the summary that opens, for example "2 people will lose access to 340 records", then click Apply. In a workspace of more than 40 people, opening records to everyone also asks you to type share.
5. Contacts and Deals have "Company owner sees them too": when it is on, whoever owns a company also sees that company's contacts and deals, even when those are private to someone else.
6. "Members can mark their own records private" lets each person hide a record they own from everyone except Owners and Admins.

## Tips
- The record owner is the person a record is assigned to. A task belongs to its assignee (or whoever created it, if nobody is assigned). A synced email thread belongs to the person whose mailbox it came from.
- Conversations nobody is assigned to (website chat, texts, social messages) stay in the shared inbox for everyone, under every setting.
- The older setting under Settings > Privacy > Record visibility still applies if it is set to Owned or Brokerage. The page shows a notice when it is.
- Picking a preset never changes whether synced email is shared or whether CRMown AI respects field restrictions.

## Example
A 12-person recruiting firm picks Structured. Each recruiter now sees only their own candidates and deals, everyone can still look up client companies, and the two partners (Admins) see everything. The summary before applying said "10 people will lose access to 4,180 records", so nobody was surprised the next morning.

## Troubleshooting
- **No Visibility tab under Permissions** — Only Owners and Admins see it, and only once record visibility is switched on for the workspace. Fix: Ask an Owner or Admin, or contact support.
- **A member says a contact disappeared** — Contacts are set to Private to owner and the contact is assigned to someone else, or its owner marked it private. Fix: Reassign the contact to them, turn on "Company owner sees them too", or set Contacts back to Everyone can view.
- **Apply is greyed out** — The change opens records to everyone in a workspace of more than 40 people. Fix: Type share in the box to confirm.
- **Unassigned contacts vanished for members** — Under Private to owner, a contact with no owner is visible only to Owners and Admins. Fix: Assign the contacts, or use Everyone can view.

## Plans
Private, Everyone can view and Everyone can edit are available on every plan. Team-based visibility comes with Teams.