How to Secure a Data Role by Multiple Business Units
- by Elie Wazen
In this post we will see  how  a Role can be data  secured by multiple Business Units (BUs).  Separate Data Roles are generally created for each BU if a corresponding data template generates roles on the basis of the BU dimension. The advantage of creating a policy with a rule that includes multiple BUs  is that while mapping these roles in HCM Role Provisioning Rules, fewer number of entires need to be made. This could facilitate maintenance for enterprises with a large number of Business Units.  
    Note: The example below applies as well if the securing entity is Inventory Organization.  
     
    Let us take for example the case of a user provisioned with the "Accounts Payable Manager - Vision Operations" Data Role in Fusion Applications. This user will be able to access Invoices in Vision Operations but will not be able to see Invoices in Vision Germany.  
     
       
       
         
          Figure 1. A User with a Data Role restricting them to Data from BU: Vision Operations 
         
       
      
     
      With the role granted above, this is what the user will see when they attempt to select Business Units while searching for AP Invoices.   
     
     
       
         
        Figure 2.The List Of Values of Business Units is limited to single one. This is the effect of the Data Role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 1 
          
       
     
      
     
      In order to create a data role that secures by multiple BUs,  we need  to start by creating a condition that groups those Business Units we want to include in that data role. 
    
      
      
       
      This is accomplished by creating a new condition against the BU View .  That Condition will later be used to create a  data policy for our newly created Role.   
      The BU View is a Database resource and  is accessed  from APM as seen in the search below 
       
      Figure 3.Viewing a Database Resource in APM 
        
      The next  step is create a new condition,  in which we define a sql predicate that includes 2 BUs ( The ids below refer to  Vision Operations and Vision Germany).   
      At this point we have simply created a standalone condition.  We have not used this condition yet, and security is therefore not affected. 
     
     
       
        
Figure 4. Custom Role that inherits the Purchase Order  Overview Duty
      
      
      
      
       
       
          
        We are  now ready to create our Data Policy.  in APM, we  search for our newly Created Role and Navigate to “Find Global Policies”.  we query the Role we want to secure and navigate to view its global policies. 
          
         
        Figure 5. The Job Role we plan on securing 
          
        We can see that the role was not defined with a Data Policy . So will create one  that uses the condition we created earlier.    
         
         
        Figure 6. Creating a New Data Policy 
        In the  General Information tab, we have to specify the DB Resource that the Security  Policy applies to:  In our case this is  the BU View 
         
        Figure 7. Data Policy Definition - Selection of the DB Resource we will secure by 
          
          
        In the  Rules Tab, we  make the rule  applicable to multiple values of the DB  Resource we selected in the previous tab.   
        This is  where we associate the condition we created against the BU view to  this data policy by entering the Condition name in the Condition field 
         
        Figure 8. Data Policy Rule 
          
        The last step of Defining the Data Policy, consists of  explicitly selecting  the Actions  that are goverened by this Data Policy.  In this  case for example we select the Actions displayed below in the right pane. Once the record is saved , we are ready to use our newly secured Data Role. 
         
         
        Figure 9. Data Policy Actions 
          
        We can  now see a new Data Policy associated with our Role.   
         
        Figure 10. Role is now secured by a Data Policy  
          
          
        We now  Assign that new Role to the User.  Of  course this does not have to be done in OIM and can be done using a Provisioning Rule in HCM.  
         
        Figure 11. Role assigned to the User who previously was granted the Vision Ops secured role. 
          
          
        Once that  user accesses the Invoices Workarea this is what they see:  
        In the  image below the LOV of Business Unit returns the two values defined in our data  policy namely: Vision Operations and Vision Germany 
         
        Figure 12. The List Of Values of Business Units now includes the two we included in our data policy. This is the effect of the data role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 11