Global and per-business-unit governance
Global policies set required fields for the whole organization and can flag that new records need approval. You create policies scoped as Global or Business unit and look up the resulting effective policy for each unit.
Data entry rules tend to grow scattered: a required field here, a stage and value combination there. As the company grows, somebody has to say what applies to the entire organization. Global governance policies concentrate that decision in one place, with inheritance across business units.
Open Settings and click Global governance.
Creating a policy
- Fill in the Name, for example Sales minimum required.
- Pick the Scope: Global applies to the whole organization; Business unit applies only to the unit chosen in the next field.
- Under Approval required, pick Yes, No or Inherit.
- Under Required fields, list the field names separated by commas, for example owner, region.
- Under Retention (days), enter the term, if that applies.
- Save. The policy appears in the table below, with the Active column.
Effective policy
The Effective policy block shows the result of combining the policies. The order is always the same: first the global policy, then the unit policies along the path from the root down to the leaf, so that the most specific one wins. The Inherit value overrides nothing, it simply lets through whatever came from above. Only active policies take part.
What each field really does
- Required fields: this is the rule that actually blocks. When a record is created, the system refuses the write if one of the listed fields exists on that object and is empty, and it shows the labels that are missing. When editing, the requirement applies to the fields you are changing, so a new policy does not lock the editing of old records.
- Approval required: when turned on, the record is created normally and, right afterward, an approval request is opened and linked to it. It is not a block: the record exists from the very first moment and the approval happens afterward. On top of that, the request is only opened if your organization has an approval policy configured that matches the case; without one, nothing happens.
- Retention (days): this one does delete. Once a day the system sends to the trash the records created more than N days ago. Global scope reaches the whole organization; Business unit scope reaches the records of the company that unit belongs to. With more than one active global policy, the longest term wins. The per-object retention set under Settings, Privacy & compliance keeps running alongside it.
Who can do this
- Creating, editing and deleting policies requires permission to manage settings.
- Reading the list and the effective policy is available to anyone who can open the screen.
- Every creation, change and deletion of a policy is written to the audit trail.
Common questions
- Does an inactive policy still apply? No. Only active policies enter the combination.
- What happens if I list a field that does not exist on that object? It is simply ignored for that object, with no error.
- Does deleting the policy put everything back to normal? Yes, and immediately. With no active policy, the requirement disappears and writes go back to each field's own rules.