Role Concept in Oracle Fusion Applications

This training article will helps to understand basic concepts of different roles and their brief definition and we will also try to understand relationship between them. Let us first understand Role Based Access Control in Fusion applications-

Role Based Access Control (RBAC)

An organisation needs to control who can do what on which functions or sets of data under what conditions. The who is a user here. A user's access is based on the definition of the roles provisioned (assigned) to the user. Access is defined as entitlement, which consists of privileges. The what are the abstract operations or entitlement. The which represents the resources being accessed.

RBAC normalizes access to functions and data through user roles rather than only users. User access is based on the definition of the roles provisioned to the user. The roles are defined at functional and technical levels. The functional level is the business definition that is used by business users and the technical level is the implementation of roles using Oracle Technology.

RBAC is based on the following concepts:

1. Role assignment - A subject can exercise permission only if the subject has selected or been assigned a role.

2. Role authorization - A subject’s active role must be authorized for the subject. With rule mentioned above, this rule ensures that users can take on only roles for which they are authorized.

3. Permission authorization - A subject can exercise a permission only if the permission is authorized for the subject’s active role. With rules 1 and 2, this rule ensures that users can exercise only permissions for which they are authorized.

Basically security in Fusion Application is based on Role Based Access Control (RBAC) In Fusion Applications, the RBAC implementation is based on abstract, job, duty, and data roles that work together to control access to functions and data. The definitions of these functional roles are as follows:

Abstract Role

This role categorizes the roles for reference implementation. It inherits duty role but does not contain security policies. For example: Employee, Manager, etc.

Job Role

This role defines a specific job an employee is responsible for. An employee may have many job roles. It may require the data role to control the actions of the respective objects. For example: Benefits Manager, Accounts Receivable Specialist, etc.

Data Role

This role defines access to the data within a specific duty. Who can do what on which set of data? The possible actions are read, update, delete, and manage. Only duty roles hold explicit entitlement to the data. These entitlements control the privileges such as in a user interface that can see specific screens, buttons, data columns, and other artifacts.

Duty Role

This role defines a set of tasks. It is the most granular form of a role. The job and abstract roles inherit duty roles. The data security policies are specified to duty roles to control actions on all respective objects. Duty Role is the most granular form of role where mainly security policies are attached and they are implemented as application role in Authorization Policy Manager (APM)

Below diagram from the “Oracle Fusion Applications Security Guide” shows relationships between these roles:

 Functional roles are technically implemented as Enterprise and Applications roles. The Abstract, Job and Data roles are called Enterprise roles and the Duty role is called Application role.

Enterprise Roles

Across all Fusion Applications, Abstract, Job and Data roles are mapped to Enterprise roles. These roles are stored in the Identity Store. They are managed through OIM and Identity Administration tools. This tool includes the following capabilities with respect to Enterprise role management:

• Create Fusion Applications Implementation Users

•  Provision Roles to Implementation Users

•  Manage Abstract, Job and Data roles including the job hierarchy

These roles can also be viewed from ODSM (Oracle Directory Services Manager) console.

Applications Roles

A “Duty Role” is mapped to Application Roles and is stored in the Policy Store. An application role is supplied by a single application or pillar of applications. The application policies are managed through “Authorization Policy Manager” (APM). APM is a graphical interface that simplifies the creation, configuration, and administration of application policies. Applications Authorization Policy Manager (APM) refers to enterprise roles as external roles.

How all these roles and security policies/privileges work together?

Fusion Applications seeds all the relevant roles, though they can be modified and customized based on the business requirements. Lets also understand the functional and data security policies.

Functional Security Polices

Function security consists of privileges granted to a user by means of the user’s membership in a role, to control access to a page or a specific widget or functionality/operation within a page. A function security policy consists of privileges assigned to duty roles and those duty roles assigned to a job or abstract role. Function security policies are defined in the Authorization Policy Manager (APM).

Data Security Policies

Data security policies articulate the security requirement “Who can do What on Which set of data,” where ‘Which set of data’ is an entire object or an object instance or object instance set and ‘What’ is the object entitlement. By default, users are denied access to all data. Data security makes data available to users by the following means.

• Policies that define grants available through provisioned roles

• Policies defined in the application code

A privilege is a single, real world action on a single business object. The possible actions are read, update, delete, and manage. If these privileges are not specified on a duty or data role, then all actions on the respective objects within a page, including services, screens, and flows, and typically used in control of the main menu (specified by function policy) are allowed.

Enterprise roles provide access to data through data security policies defined for the inherited application roles. When we provision a job role to a user, the job role implicitly limits data access based on the data security policies of the inherited duty roles. When you provision a data role to a user, the data role explicitly limits the data access of the inherited job role to a dimension of data.

When setting up the enterprise with structures such as business units, data roles are automatically generated that inherit job roles based on data role templates.

In order to see the Fusion Application seeded Roles, follow below navigation-

Login with your user and navigate to Functional setup Manager and search for Role Template-

When you click on Goto Task, you will taken to Oracle Entitlement server as shown below-

Click on Search Role Template as shown in the screenshot-

Search for General Ledger Template for Ledger and click on Open button and you will see below screen

These are the various Oracle Fusion Application Seeded roles for a particular example of General Ledger Role Template.

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