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Organizations often struggle with Salesforce permission models that have grown organically over time, leading to over-permissioned users, administrative complexity, poor user experience and inability to implement advanced platform capabilities. This case study examines a comprehensive permission model redesign that transformed a chaotic 580-object permission structure into a clean, business-aligned architecture using persona-based design principles and Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) methodology.
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Challenge: Sales users had access to 580 system objects with 99% being irrelevant to their job function, creating operational inefficiency and preventing platform customization.
Solution: Implemented a strategic permission architecture based on organizational capability mapping and JTBD analysis, reducing permissions by 81% while enabling advanced user experience personalization.
Impact: Achieved clean user interfaces, eliminated administrative burden, and established foundation for conditional rendering and role-specific automation.
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Most Salesforce implementations default to persona-based permission design, organizing access around user roles like "Sales Team," "Sales Manager," or "Marketing User." This approach seems intuitive, especially for older orgs that used to rely primarily on profiles, but creates predictable architectural problems that compound over time. This approach almost always fails to scale and adapt to evolving business needs.
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The Limitations of Persona-based permissions models
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The fundamental issue lies in treating permissions as technical configurations rather than business architecture. When permissions accumulate without strategic framework, organisations lose the ability to answer basic questions about their system:
Organisations typically fall into two patterns with persona-based designs: