Overview of Resource Roles, Job Roles, and Abstract Roles

A resource role, such as salesperson, denotes the function of a resource in a resource organization. Job roles and abstract roles provide users access to business data and privileges to run business flows.

Oracle follows the industry standard Role Based Access Control approach to security. In Oracle Applications, the privileges are bundled in:

• Job roles, such as Sales Representative, which correspond to the jobs that the person is doing in your organization.

• Abstract roles, such as Employee or Contingent Worker, which permit users to carry on tasks that are common to all employees or resources.

For example, the Sales Manager job role makes it possible for a user to perform all of the sales manager duties, such as reviewing sales team performance and approving forecasts. The Employee abstract role adds the ability to access reports and manage personal profile information. The Resource abstract role makes it possible for a user to be assigned as a sales resource to accounts and opportunities.

When you create a user as an employee with the Sales Manager resource role provided by Oracle, as shown in the following figure, the application automatically provisions the Sales Manager job role and the Resource abstract role. Because you're creating the user as an employee, the application also provisions the Employee abstract role.