Developing and Deploying Siebel eBusiness Applications > Required Application Administration Tasks > Defining Company Structure >

Understanding Access to Data


How you define your company's structure in your Siebel application affects the records and views to which users have visibility, or access.

There are several relationships between organizations, responsibilities, positions, and people.

There is a many-to-many relationship between a person and that person's positions. For example, an individual could hold one or more positions—sales representative for the X territory definition and sales manager for the XYZ region. Conversely, more than one person may be assigned to a single position, such as when two people share a single job.

In addition to having one or more positions, each user is then assigned one or more responsibilities. Responsibilities determine which views users can access; positions determine which records users can access.

In a situation in which a user is associated with one responsibility and multiple positions, that user has the same set of views regardless of which position that user logged on with. However, if the user changed position, that user would access different data. A user who is logged on as a sales representative can access only data (accounts, opportunities, contacts, and so on) that pertains to this position. Even though the user still has the My Team's Accounts view, the position the user is logged on as does not have any other positions reporting to it so the user does not get other data.

NOTE:  A user can change positions while logged in by choosing View > User Preferences > Change Position and choosing a different position in the list.

If the user changes to the sales manager position, the My Team's Accounts view now shows the user information for the positions reporting to that user if the user is the primary on the account. Again, the views have not changed, but the data in the views has.

Having organizations adds another level of visibility. Some data records are unavailable depending on what organization a user's position belongs to. (Users can also be given more visibility within their organization by receiving access to certain views.)

For more information on organizations and access to data, read Applications Administration Guide and Security Guide for Siebel eBusiness Applications.

Developing and Deploying Siebel eBusiness Applications