Access Groups are used for organizing users and managing content sharing within your institution. Instead of sharing content with every single user, you can share it with all members of an Access Group. Every user can be a member of one or several Access Groups. 

This article explains how Access Group hierarchy works and outlines the rules for managing user memberships.

Access Group hierarchy rules

The system uses a hierarchical structure to manage user access: 

• Parent membership rule: If a user is a member of a parent Access Group, they automatically gain membership to all sub-Access Groups (child nodes), including any Access Group added in the future. 

  These child memberships will appear as checked and read-only. This is shown in the example below:

  

• Sub-Group Limitation: If a user is only manually added to all existing sub-Access Groups below a parent, they will not automatically receive membership to new Access Group added in the future.

  This is shown in the example below with the parent node partly filled: