Benefiting from Support for Inheritance

In Windows, inheritance describes the process by which the creation of an object causes the object to assume, by default, the permissions of its parent object.

Inheritance simplifies the task of managing permissions in your Exchange system as follows:

• It eliminates the need to manually apply permissions to child objects as they are created.

• It makes sure that the permissions attached to a parent object are applied consistently to all child objects.

• When permissions on all objects in a container must be modified, you change the permissions on the container only one time. The objects inside the container inherit the changes automatically.

For some Exchange objects, you can customize this inheritance. These objects are public folder trees, address lists, and mailbox stores. For these objects, you can specify that the child does not inherit permissions. Or, you can specify that only the following containers or subcontainers inherit permissions:

• This container only

• This container and all subcontainers

• Subcontainers only

Inheritance makes it possible for permissions to be applied consistently in an object hierarchy. In itself, inheritance is an important tool for simplifying the application of permissions.