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Ownership Type

Overview

When you create an entity record, you may define its owner. The type of the owner depends on the entity a record of which you create. For accounts, for example, you can define a user as an owner. For business units it must be another business unit.


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‘Owner’ is an important concept as it may influence a user’s access rights. For example, ‘Lex Shop’ account belongs to John who has access to the ‘West’ office of the ‘Acme’ company. The company employees have access only to the accounts of the office they work at. If Acme decides to transfer John to another office and restricts him access to the ‘West’ office, employees of the ‘West’ office will not be able to access ‘Lex Shop’ any more.

Can a particular entity be managed by a user or a business unit or a organization? Or maybe this is a global entity? You answer these questions by specifying the ownership type for an entity. For example, an ownership type of the Account entity is User. So, a customer’s account can be ‘owned’ by a particular user. The user can access, manage this account and is responsible for it. A business unit represents a team of users. Decisions about a business unit’s fate are taken at the level of the business unit that incorporates the said one or directly at the level of the organization. So, it takes at least another business unit to ‘own’ the business unit. And the Business Unit entity ownership type is Business Unit.


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The following table describes who or what can own entity records depending on the entity ownership type:

Ownership typePossible owners
UserUsers
Business UnitBusiness units
OrganizationOrganizations
NoneNo owner (it can be also said that the owner is the system itself)

Ownership Type and Access Levels

An entity’s ownership type limits the range of access levels you can set for actions on this entity.

The following table shows what access levels can be assigned depending on the entity’s ownership type:

Ownership typePossible access levels for an entity with this ownership type
UserNone, User, Business Unit, Division, Organization, Global
Business UnitNone, Business Unit, Division, Organization, Global
OrganizationNone, Organization, Global
NoneNone, Global

Caution

As you can see, ownership types in general have the same names as access levels. However, do not be confused: they are very different things. This becomes especially straightforward when you compare the None ownership type and the None access level:

The None ownership type gives the widest access to entity records. It says ‘This record does not belong to any particular organization or business unit or user. Therefore, either each existing user can access it, or no one at all.’

The None access level completely restricts access to entity records. It says ‘No one can perform this action on the entity.’

Actions

Configure an Ownership Type for an Entity

Important

You can define an entity ownership type only during the entity creation. As soon as the entity is saved for the first type, its ownership type cannot be changed. Consequently, you cannot change the predefined ownership types of the system entities (such as Account, Business Unit, etc.).

  1. Start creating a new entity. To do this, follow the instructions provided in the Create Entities section of the Entities guide. Specify all information as required for the General Information, Communication & Collaboration, Attachments sections.
  2. Click Other.
  3. From the Ownership Type list, select the desired ownership type.

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  1. Click the Save button in the upper-right corner.

Review the Ownership Type for an Entity

  1. Open the entity view page:

    1. In the main menu, navigate System>Entities>Entity Management.
    2. In the grid on the All Entities page, click the required entity.
  2. On the entity view page, click General Information and review the Ownership Type fields.

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