What is a parent group?
A parent group is a Group of groups that lists the current group among its child groups. In other words, if Group A has Group B as a child, then from Group B's perspective, Group A is its parent. This relationship means that members of Group B are automatically included in Group A's membership via the nightly synchronization.
The Parent Groups tab
The Parent Groups tab in a group detail view lists all groups that include the current group as a child. This is a read-only view — parent relationships are managed from the parent group's Child Groups tab, not from the child group itself.
Each row in the Parent Groups tab shows the parent group's code and name, linked to its detail view. A icon indicates that the parent group is a Global group.
The tab is only shown when at least one parent relationship exists. If the group is not a child of any other group, this tab is not displayed.
Implications of parent group membership
Understanding parent group relationships is important for several reasons:
- Access inheritance: If the parent group is linked to a Permission Package or has provisioning configured, members of the child group will inherit those entitlements through the parent.
- Membership scope: When checking a user's effective access, you need to consider not only the groups they are directly in, but also any parent groups that include those groups as children.
- Deletion impact: Before deleting a group, check whether it has any parent groups. Removing the child group will remove those members from the parent group's population on the next synchronization.
The Responsibility Of tab
The Responsibility Of tab is separate from the Parent Groups tab and shows something different: it lists the groups for which the current group itself has been assigned as the responsible group.
In OpenStudio, a group's responsible is typically a user, but it can also be configured as another group — meaning that membership in the responsible group confers management rights over the target groups. The Responsibility Of tab makes this relationship visible: it answers the question "which other groups does this group have responsibility over?"
This tab is only displayed for non-default groups that actually have this kind of responsibility relationship configured. If the tab is not visible, this group has not been assigned as the responsible for any other group.
