Multiple Business Units and Data Access for Sales Objects

The way that you implement multiple business unit functionality in your enterprise can affect your users access to object transactional data.

A business unit (BU) is a unit of an enterprise that performs one or more business functions, such as sales or marketing. A business unit primarily provides a means of separating or sharing setup data and controlling transactional data access within an enterprise. By default, an enterprise structure is created as a single business unit to which all users belong but you can create additional business units if you need to.

Users are associated with a business unit through their resource organization membership. Resource organizations are mapped to one or more business units. When you create a sales user and assign the user to a resource organization, the user gains access to each business unit that's mapped to the resource organization. For example, users can access relevant transactional data associated with their primary business unit, but might also have access to relevant transactional data in other business units through their resource organization.

Note: When you create a user in the sales application, you specify a business unit for the user. But only the BUs associated with the user's resource organization are relevant in determining the business units a user can access. If a business unit isn't specified for a resource organization, the default business unit is used.

Within the sales application, these business objects support the use of multiple business units:

• Contracts

• Leads

• Opportunities

• Resource Organizations

• Territories

When you create an object that supports multiple business units, such as an opportunity, you specify the business unit to associate with the object.

Object Access in a Single Business Unit Environment (Default)

In this type of implementation, all users can access master data, such as product or account information, by default. Users also have access to transactional data for objects such as opportunities, contracts or leads:

• Sales administrators can access transactional data for all objects.

• Sales users gain access to transactional data for an object through one of these methods:

  • They have been granted full access to the object

  • Through territory or team membership

  • Through the resource management hierarchy

  Full access to an object is provided through data security policies that include a condition of All Values. This table provides information about other methods of object access.

  Type of Object Access	Description
  Territory membership	You gain access to an object if: You're the owner or member of the territory that's assigned to the object. You're the owner or member of an ancestor territory of the territory assigned to the object. Your direct or indirect report in the resource hierarchy is the owner or a member of the territory assigned to the object. Your direct or indirect report in the resource hierarchy is the owner or member of an ancestor territory of the territory assigned to the object.
  Team membership	You gain access to an object if: You're a member of the sales team assigned to the object. Your direct or indirect report in the resource hierarchy is a member of the sales team assigned to the object . You're a member of the partner team assigned to the object.

Object Access in a Multiple Business Unit Environment

In a multiple business unit environment, access to objects and data is influenced by the business unit the user belongs to. In this type of implementation, access to transactional data for objects, such as opportunities or leads, is determined in these ways:

• Sales administrators can access transactional data for all objects that are associated with the business unit or units to which the administrators are assigned.

• Sales users access to transactional data for an object is the same in multiple business unit environments and single business unit environments. So sales users can access object data across business unit boundaries provided that they have valid access to the object by means of territory or team membership, through the resource hierarchy, or by being granted full access to the object.

  But business unit assignment can indirectly affect a user's access to object transactional data. In a multiple business unit environment, business units are available as territory dimensions and can be included as part of the territory coverage definition for the assignment of transactions. A sales user gains access to object data through territory membership. If business unit is specified as a territory dimension, then the user's access to data is limited to objects which, when they were created, were assigned to the same business unit that's assigned to the user's territory team.

For additional information about using multiple business units, see the Oracle Fusion Cloud Sales Automation: Implementation Reference guide.