Explain Organization wide default (OWD) in Salesforce.

Hi Anjali,

OWD stands for Organization-wide defaults. This setting is defined at object level. OWD defined the default record level sharing for objects. All profiles get at least the privileges defined in OWD. OWD takes three different values -

A. Private
B. Public Read-only
C. Public Read-Write

To find out what should be set as OWD for an object, first find out which user requires least access to an object. OWD is set based upon this users access requirements.
Most restrictive record access is defined using OWD. Access to additional records is made available through Role hierarchy, Sharing rules, Manual sharing.

Thanks.

There are four levels of access that can be set:
Public Read/Write/Transfer (only available of Leads and Cases)
Public Read/Write
Public Read/Only
Private