By default, accounts inherit categories from the partner and profiles inherit categories from the account. You can choose to manage individual account or profile categories. Inherited categories for accounts and profiles appear in read-only mode.

When you assign categories to objects, you also restrict access to the following related objects:

Endpoints. Inherit categories from the account.
Events. Inherit categories from the account.
Monitors. Inherit categories from the partner.
SLA rules. Inherit categories from the account.

When you add an account to a partner, B2B Data Exchange sets the account categories according to the category management mode. For example, if you apply partner categories to the accounts, new accounts inherit the partner categories. If you add or remove categories from the partner, B2B Data Exchange applies the change to all accounts for that partner.

If you change the category management mode to inherit from the partner or account, all existing categories for the profile or account are overridden. If you change the category management mode to manage individual account categories, you must save the partner before you can assign categories to individual accounts.

The B2B Data Exchange administrator creates categories and grants permissions for the categories to user groups. Objects without categories are accessible by all B2B Data Exchange users. Objects with categories are accessible only by users with permissions to one or more categories.