The user hierarchy is a structure in the database that supports inheritance of user privileges. The act of publishing a user creates his position and relationships within the hierarchical structure. For example, the system specialist publishes the administrators, administrators publish location administrators, location administrators publish regional administrators, and regional administrators publish data entry users.

A user inherits privileges from the user who publishes or creates him. Privilege inheritance enables a user to publish other users without redefining common privileges. A publisher can deny privileges to users lower in the hierarchy. A publisher cannot allow privileges that he does not have. Users can view objects published by users lower in the hierarchy and modify security settings of those objects. A publisher can only assign a user lower in the hierarchy as a publisher of another object.