Business Units

In the last step, we investigated Solution Components. Now, let’s look at Business Units.

Business units offer security boundaries for users (and teams) for access and privileges to the data in the organisation. If your organisation is structured around departments or divisions that have separate products, customers, and more, you might want to create business units. Business units define the scope in which security roles are applied. For example, it’s possible to configure the environment where users can access data only in their own business unit and nowhere else. Business units can be mapped to an organisation’s departments or divisions.

Business units, security roles and users are linked together in a way that conforms to the role-based security model. Use business units together with security roles to control data access so people see just the information they need to do their jobs.

Common Data Service security roles and users are associated with a business unit. You must assign every user to one (and only one) business unit. You can assign a team to just one business unit, but a team can consist of users from one or many business units. Consider using a team if you have a situation where users from different business units need to work together on a shared set of records.

Each business unit in the environment contains a default owner team. Users assigned to a business unit are automatically included into the default team. These teams do not have any security roles assigned, it is up to you to configure this team.

While an organisation chart might provide a starting point, it is important to determine the organisation’s needs on sharing information since this will most often dictate the structure you must use.

Root Business Unit

The root business unit is the top level of the business unit hierarchy. This may be the corporation or holding company of all business units in the organisation. Root business units also have the following characteristics:

• The root business unit is automatically created when you provision a Common Data Service database.

• You cannot change the name of the root business unit once it has been created by the system when CDS database is provisioned. Name is based on the name of your CDS environment.

• Because it is the top-most business unit in the organisational hierarchy, it cannot be assigned a parent business unit.

• Root business units cannot be deleted or disabled.

• Solutions can only contain security roles contained in the root business unit.

Child Business Units

Child business units can represent subsidiaries, divisions, departments, or other isolated areas of business within an organisation. Child business units also have the following characteristics:

• A child business unit can be deleted but must first be disabled.

• Name of a child business unit can be changed.

• Disabling a business unit disables all child business units below it. All users assigned to a disabled business unit will no longer be able to log into the application.

Reorganising Business Units

Reorganising a business unit is a matter of changing a business unit’s parent. When you reassign a business unit to a new parent, the tree hierarchy is maintained.

Reparenting a business unit is performed via the Change Parent Business option found under the Actions menu of the business unit record.

Security Roles and Business Units

A security role is created in and remains in a Business Unit. Default security roles are created automatically in the root Business Unit when Common Data Service database is provided. Security roles created in parent business units are inherited to their child business units. Within the child business units, these are referred to as inherited roles and cannot be modified or deleted.

Users and teams can only be assigned to security roles found in their own business unit. Leveraging inherited roles makes it easier to assign the same privileges to users in different business units without having to replicate the same roles.

Remember to engage with peers – share an experience, ask a question or leave a comment. Next up, we’ll be finding out more about Business Units Structure Examples.