Role Hierarchy
The role hierarchy determines which roles have access to the data owned by other roles. The person in the top role has full access (view and edit) to his or her own data as well as the data of anyone lower in the hierarchy. Two common ways to set up a role hierarchy are by region or by product. Although a role hierarchy may look similar to an org chart, it usually has fewer layers and the people at the top are not necessarily those at the top of the org chart.
In the example above, data access works like this:
- The CEO/CFO roles have complete access (view, edit, and report) to all data in the organization.
- The regional directors (Western, Eastern, and International) have access (view and edit) to their data and to the data of the sales reps below them. They do not have access to each others' data.
- The users at the lowest level have access (view, edit, and report) only to their own data.
Note: If there is a conflict between the role hierarchy and the organization-wide defaults, the role hierarchy takes precedence.
There are three basic steps to setting up a successful role hierarchy:
- Define the basic roles, such as sales representative, director of sales, and CEO. It's not necessary to create individual roles for each title; the idea is to simply define a hierarchy that gives users in higher-level roles access to the information entered by users in lower-level roles.
- Build the role hierarchy based on how information should roll up for reporting and on who should see what data.
- Assign individual users to the roles.
- To set up your role hierarchy, go to Administration Setup --> Manage Users --> Roles.
- For step-by-step instructions, see the " Adding and Editing User Roles" online Help topic
- See also the Administrator Setup - Role Hierarchy training segment.
