A user can be a member of several different groups. These groups may have certain preferences set for them. A group may also be a member of another group, where a preference has been specified. In this case the preference is inherited downwards through the chain of parent/child-groups.
When a user is a member of several groups which has conflicting preferences, it is not always apparent which preference will take effect for the user. Conflicts are solved like this:
If a user is an explicit member of a group, preferences set for that group will take precedence over inherited preferences from parent groups.
If a user is an explicit member of several groups where conflicting preferences has been specified, alphabetical order of the group names will determine which preference takes precedence.
If a user is a member of several groups which inherit preferences from various groups further up in the hierarchy, any conflicting preferences will be resolved by alphabetical order of the groups where the preferences is specified.
If you do not want a certain group to inherit a preference based on the alphabetical choice (as explained above), you can force the selection for a that group by explicitly specifying a "primary group". A primary group is used to specify which of several parent groups should take precedence when inheriting preferences to a child group. Note that this only works when the preferences are set one level up, that is, on a parent group. The precedence of preferences inherited from groups further up in the group hierarchy will not be affected.
Take a look at the example below.
The group Project Greenbook is a member of the group Analysts and the group Researchers. These two groups both have a specific default value set for Color. In this case, the Analysts group has the default color Blue, and the Researchers group has the default color Red.
So which of these will be the default color for the group Project Greenbook, that is a subgroup that inherits both groups? If nothing else has been specified, it will use an alphabetical priority when picking its more important parent. In our example, it will pick the Analysts group, and inherit Blue as its default color.
However, if you want Red to be the default color for Project Greenbook, you can set which of its two parents is the "primary group", and in doing so, specify the group to inherit from if there are conflicts.
To set primary group:
Select the group you want to define a primary group for, from the Available groups list.
Click the Assign Primary Group button.
Response: The "Assign Primary Group" dialog is displayed.
Select the group you want to be the Primary Group.
Click OK when done.
See also: