Understanding Tiers for Parent/Child Organizational Structures

The JD Edwards Address Book system provides tiers as a way to control a structure of parent/child relationships. When you set up tiers, you specify:

• Only one parent for any child on any date.

• Beginning and ending effective dates for the relationship between a parent and child.

• Names for the tiers of an organizational structure, for example CEO as level 1, Vice Presidents as level 2, Managers as level 3, and so on. Each tier can have a beginning and ending effective date.

This diagram shows an organizational structure that is set up using tiers. The parent (1001) has three children (4343, 3480, 3333). Each of these children is a parent to other children. Parent 4343 has two children (1002, 4242), parent 3480 has one child (3008), and parent 3333 has three children (3434, 3121, 3002). With tiers, each child can have only one parent.

Important: If you select the processing option and create parent/child organization structures with tiers, and later clear the processing option, be aware of the potential risks. If you do this, you might mistakenly add multiple parents to a child or enter effective dates that overlap for a parent/child relationship or a tier structure.

The organizational structure type is defined in UDC table 01/TS (Structure Type).