The role hierarchy provides a framework to structure access to records and other information in your organization.  Various settings (sharing rules, groups, folder sharing criteria, etc.) rely heavily on roles to structure access to content.

It often helps to evaluate an org chart provided by human resources in order to create the role hierarchy structure in Salesforce.  However, the role hierarchy in Salesforce must be designed based on access requirements and may ultimately vary significantly from an org chart provided by human resources.

Three examples provided by Salesforce are:

1. Territory-based
2. Product-based
3. Company Size-based

A user’s role sets the foundation for what records they can access.

Users are granted Full Access to records to records that they own, as well as records owned by owned by users in subordinate roles on objects where Grant Access Using Hierarchies is enabled.

Grant Access Using Hierarchies is always enabled for standard objects but can be disabled for custom objects.