Managing Groups

A group is a collection of users based on a logical division, such as:

• System role
• Department
• Location

There are two types of groups in SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing.

Custom Groups

• Can be created to organize users by various logical divisions.
• Custom groups themselves have no direct permissions.
• Can be added as a child of a system group, allowing custom groups to inherit system group permissions.

Example: A commodity approval group can be created to organize users who need to approve sourcing activities for specific commodity codes.

User Group membership can be used to:

• Determine the functions a user can perform

• Route documents for approval

• Control dashboard visibility

• Setup email notifications

• Control visibility on documents

• Control visibility and validation of custom fields

Note

Permissions contained in system groups can not be split and regrouped.

In the user interface, the Defined By field identifies:

• System Groups: for SAP Ariba standard out-of-the-box system groups
• Ariba Managed: for custom groups created directly in the UI
• External: for custom groups created by data import

Users can be assigned to specific groups either manually or by using the data import/export functionality.The assignment can occur when the user is first added to the system, as seen in the previous lesson, or at a later stage. For example, a user initially hired for sourcing activities, in time, might also be involved with contract workspace creation.

Our new employee, Monique Dupont, has recently taken over some supplier related activities. She will have to manage preferred suppliers. I need to assign her the system permissions to be able to manage that. Go through the simulation below to learn how to assign new groups to existing users.

In the default configuration, some SAP Ariba system groups are already assigned out-of-the-box child groups, which inherit all the privileges of the parent group. For example:

• Members of the Sourcing Agent group can create sourcing events.
• The Event Administrator group is a child group of the Sourcing Agent group.
• Members of the Event Administrator group can also create events because the Event Administrator group inherits all the privileges of the Sourcing Agent group.

System groups provide functional area, and access level permissions.

Each access level grants a unique set of permissions, which does not necessarily grant all permissions of "lesser" access levels.

For example, a Sourcing Agent may not automatically be granted access to Supplier Management.

Functional Areas represent the type of work for which the action is designed. Some groups are specialized and only have actions in a single functional area; for example, the actions that a member of the Contract Manager group can perform are in the Contracts functional area.

Other groups can perform actions in multiple functional areas; for example, the actions a member of the Customer Administrator group can perform span the Sourcing, Supplier Management and Contracts functional areas.

The most frequently used system groups for each of the solutions part of the Strategic Sourcing suite.

• Commodity Manager
• Junior Sourcing Agent
• Sourcing Agent
• Sourcing Approver
• Sourcing Manager

• Contract Administrator
• Contract Agent
• Contract Approver
• Contract Manager
• Sales Contract Administrator
• Sales Contract Agent
• Sales Contract Approver
• Sales Contract Authorized
• Sales Contract Manager
• Sales Contract Request Agent
• Internal Contract Agent
• Internal Contract Approver
• Internal Contract Authorized
• Internal Contract Manager
• Internal Contract Administrator
• Document Signer

• Supplier Request Manager
• Supplier Registration Manager
• Supplier Qualification Manager
• Preferred Supplier Manager
• SM Modular Questionnaire Manager
• SM Process Manager
• Supplier Internal Questionnaire Editor
• SPM Agent
• Sensitive Data Access
• SM Manual ERP Sync
• SM Ops Admin
• SM Advanced View Access
• Legal
• Finance

Access the Read More SAP link below to learn more about supplier management user groups.

SAP Help Portal: Supplier Management User Groups | SAP Help Portal

• Project Administrator
• Customer User Admin
• Classificed Access
• Internal User
• Supplier/ Customer User Agent
• Supplier/ Customer Manager
• Senior Analyst
• Template Creator
• Customer Dashboard Admin
• Customization Administrator
• Deleted Documents Access
• Project Mass Edit Administrator
• Project Email Templates Administrator
• Finance
• Legal
• Translator
• Commodity Code Manager
• Currency Manager
• Integration Administrator

In addition to system-level groups, SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing users will also be added to project-level groups. This happens so you can assign specific capabilities and access rights to users to a particular project or template. You configure capabilities and access rights for a group by assigning a role to a group. You can create groups and assign these roles to groups at the template or individual project level.

Jenny is tasked with creating a new group for all North America Sourcing Specialists to provide both sourcing and supplier management privileges to specific employees.