In this article
Entity: Definition and Security
Multi-Entity Management uses one of the two global dimensions that are available in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Each value within the global dimension represents an entity. Global dimensions are how the core functionality of Multi-Entity Management is available.
For more information, see the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central documentation.
To set up Multi-Entity Management, review the MEM Setup Workflow.
User-Entity Security
Multi-Entity Management provides a level of security in which users require a user-entity relationship to access data. User-entity relationships are set up on the MEM User Security Setup page. On this page, a user can be set up to have access to one or more entities. When the entity is assigned to a record, the user may or may not be able to access the record depending on the user access to an entity.
A single user can have access to one or more entities.
To set up Multi-Entity Management, review the Security Workflow.
The following image demonstrates the user-entity security relationships.
The image shows the following:
- Two users with the entities they can access:
- User 1 has access to entities: 000, 100, and 200
- User 2 has access only to entity 200.
- The entities are assigned to each customer record as follows:
- Entity 000 is assigned to Customer A and Customer B.
- Entity 100 is assigned to Customer B.
- Entity 200 is assigned to Customer C and Customer D
Based on the user-entity relationships, the users have access to the customer records as follows:
| Customer A | Customer B | Customer C | Customer D | |
| User 1 (000, 100, 200) |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| User 2 (200) |
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Entity Security: Records
Entities are assigned to records so that users can access the data. Entities are assigned to the following data records on the MEM Master Security page:
- Bank Account
- Customer
- Fixed Asset
- Item
- Job
- Location
- Payment Method
- Resources
- Service Item
- Vendor
An entity can be assigned to one or more data records. Also, a single data record can be assigned one or more entities. Review the previous example to better understand how the entity security works.
To set up Multi-Entity Management, review the Security Workflow.
Owner Entity
While multiple entities can be assigned to a single data record, one entity is considered to be the owner entity of the data record. For this data record, the owner entity is assigned on the card page for the record. The owner entity can be assigned to the following data records:
Entity Security: Transactions
Entities are assigned to transactions in one of the following ways:
- Existing transactions before installing and using Multi-Entity Management
- New transactions after installing Multi-Entity Management
Use the MEM Assign Entity and the MEM Assign Entity Posted Transactions pages for assigning entities to transactions.
Entities are assigned to the transaction and transaction lines at the time the transaction is created. Also, entities are assigned to journal entries based on options from the Multi-Entity Management setup.
