Access Control for Parties

Individual people, groupings of people, and entities that represent people or groups are unified in the common notion of parties. Different party types have different access control mechanisms available.

Note: For technical information about how parties function at the data model level, see Party Data Model.

Parties are categorized into the following party types: Person, Position, Organization, Household, User List, and Access Group. The following table describes the qualitative differences among different parties and identifies the applicable party type for each party.

Party	Party Type	Examples	Distinguishing Features
Person (or Contact)	Person	An employee at a customer company. An employee at a competitor’s company.	A Person is an individual who is represented by a Person record in the database. Without additional attributes, a Person has no access to your database.
User	Person	A registered customer on your Web site. A self-registered partner user, that is, one who has no position.	A User is a Person who can log into your database and has a responsibility that defines what application views are accessible. A self-registered partner on a Siebel partner application has a responsibility, but does not have a position like a full Partner User has.
Employee	Person	An employee at your company.	An Employee is a User who is associated with a position in a division within your company.
Position	Position	A job title within your company. A job title within a partner company.	Positions exist for the purpose of representing reporting relationships. A position within your company is associated with a division and is associated with the organization to which that division belongs. A position within a partner company is associated with a division and is associated with the partner organization to which that division belongs. A position can be associated with one division only. A position can have a parent position. It can also have child positions. One or more employees can be associated with an internal position, and one or more partner users can be associated with an external position. An employee or partner user can be associated with more than one position, but only one position is active at any time.
Partner User	Person	An employee at a partner company.	A Partner User is a User who is associated with a position in a division within an external organization. Therefore, a Partner User is also an Employee, but not an internal one.
Account	Organization	A company or group of individuals with whom you do business.	An account is typically made up of contacts. An account is not a division, an internal organization, or an external organization. An account can have a parent account. It can also have child accounts. An account can be promoted to a partner organization.
Division	Organization	An organizational unit within your company such as Manufacturing or Corporate. A group of people operating within a particular country.	A division exists for the purposes of mapping a company’s physical structure into the Siebel database and for providing a container for position hierarchies. A division can have a parent division. It can also have child divisions. Data cannot be associated directly with a division. (Divisions that are not designated as organizations do not drive visibility.)
Organization	Organization	An organizational unit within your company, such as your European organization. Countries are not units of access control in Siebel Business Applications; use organizations to manage access control for specific groupings of countries. A partner company.	An organization is a division that is designated as an organization. An organization exists for the purpose of providing a container in which positions can be associated with data. An organization can be internal or it can be a partner organization. A division can be associated with only one organization: itself or an ancestor division that is also an organization.
Household	Household	A group of people, typically a family, who reside at the same residence. A group of purchasers who live in different residences.	Typically, a household is a group of individual consumers who are economically affiliated and share a common purchasing or service interest. A household can have any combination of contacts, users, employees, and partner users as members. An individual can belong to more than one household.
User List	User List	A support team made up of some internal employees and some partner users.	A user list is a group of people. It can have any combination of contacts, users, employees, and partner users as members. A user list cannot have a parent or children.
Access Group	Access Group	Your partner IT service providers and business-to-business customer companies that buy networking equipment. A partner community, such as the resellers of a particular sector of your product line.	An access group is a group of any combination of parties of type Position, Organization, and User List. That is, it is a group of groups. An access group can have a parent access group. It can also have child access groups.

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