As described earlier, users who are members of a given organization automatically acquire any global or organizational roles that you assign to that organization. Role inheritance also works for child organizations; a user who is assigned to a child organization inherits the roles of the parent organization.
Note that the only way to view all the roles that a user has inherited is through the People and Organizations > Roles window. You cannot identify all a user’s inherited roles through the Users window; in this window, you can see only the roles that a user is assigned individually and the roles associated with the organization to which he or she has been directly assigned.
Consider the following example. You create an organization called West Coast and you create an organizational role for it called West Coast Employee. Then you create a child organization called Sales and an organizational role for it called Sales Team. You assign an employee called Ruth to the child organization. She inherits the Sales Team role from her own organization, and she also inherits the West Coast Employee role from the parent organization.
If you view Ruth’s role information in the People and Organizations > Users window, or through the Users panel that appears in the People and Organizations > Organizations window, you can see only the Sales Team role, which is the role associated with the organization to which she is directly assigned. The West Coast Employee role is not listed.
Users window showing roles for organizations to which a user is directly assigned
To confirm that Ruth has indeed inherited the role of West Coast Employee, use the Roles window:
Display the People and Organizations > Roles window.
Select the West Coast Employee role from the list on the left.
Display the Members tab.
In the query box, specify Items of Type User, and then click List.
Verify that Ruth’s name appears in the list, as shown in the image below:
Roles window showing all users assigned to an organizational role
See also A Note about Displaying Organizational Inheritance.
