Isolated Dynamics CRM Security Feature – “Reparent”

There’s a feature of Dynamics CRM (that’s been in the product since version 3, I believe) that actually lives outside of the “front-and-center” security model that you normally think of with Dynamics CRM security roles.

I’m talking about the cascading functionality defined in entity relationships. Specifically, there is a cascading property called “Reparent.” There’s an old (but still relevant) article here about how this reparent functionality works. As this article explains, if you have a 1:N relationship between accounts and opportunities, and in this relationship, you have set the “reparent” property to “cascade all,” this means that the owner of an account (Acme INC) will see any opportunities created with Acme INC as the related account, and any opportunities whose related account is updated to be Acme INC.

When does “Reparent” take effect?

To go a bit deeper though, it’s important to understand exactly when this reparent property comes into play. If…