Role and territory hierarchies for record access in a care organization
Key Takeaway
Role hierarchy access passes upward to the roles above and does not cross branches, so a separate branch keeps a group's records away from managers in other branches.
Role and territory hierarchies control who can see records they do not own by passing access upward to users higher in the hierarchy. A role hierarchy follows levels of data access, such as supervisors over their staff. A territory hierarchy, from Enterprise Territory Management, organizes access around territories, which suits coverage models that do not follow reporting lines. In a care organization, the design of these hierarchies affects which supervisors see which staff records.
How the role hierarchy passes access
The role hierarchy opens access vertically. Users in a role get automatic access to records owned by or shared with users in roles below them. The access can come from ownership, sharing rules, manual sharing, or other features.
Inherited access matches the subordinate's access level. If a subordinate has read-only access to a record, users above them also get read-only access. Within that level, higher-role users can view, edit, and report on the data.
A Care Manager role sits above a Care Coordinator role, so care managers see what the coordinators can see, and no sharing rule is needed. Ana, a care coordinator, has read-only access to a patient's record. Her care manager also gets read-only access to that record.
The role hierarchy works together with organization-wide defaults, which set the baseline. The recommended approach is to lock data to the most restrictive level and then open access selectively. The role hierarchy then gives managers the same data as their staff, regardless of the organization-wide default settings.