Salesforce Opportunity Update Reminder — Controlling Which Users Are Included via Role Hierarchy

Salesforce Opportunity Update Reminders are controlled by the Role Hierarchy, which is a structure in Salesforce that defines the reporting relationships between users in your org. The Role Hierarchy is configured under Setup and is separate from the "Manager" field found on the User object. The Manager field on the User object does not influence which users are included in Opportunity Update Reminders.

How Role Hierarchy Determines Included Users

When a user in a given role enables Opportunity Update Reminders, Salesforce automatically includes all users who are in roles that report to that user's role in the Role Hierarchy. Specifically, if Role B is configured to report to Role A in the Role Hierarchy, and a user assigned to Role A has opted to receive Opportunity Update Reminders, then all users assigned to Role B are included in that reminder report. Any Opportunities owned by those Role B users are counted and appear in the report. This inclusion extends recursively — any roles subordinate to Role B are also included.

Real-Life Example

For example, consider a Regional Sales Manager assigned to the "Regional Manager" role (Role A) in the Salesforce Role Hierarchy, with three Account Executives assigned to the "Account Executive" role (Role B) that reports to Role A. If the Regional Sales Manager enables Opportunity Update Reminders, all three Account Executives are automatically included in the reminder report, along with all Opportunities they own — even if the "Manager" field on the Account Executive User records points to a different user.
If the Account Executives also have Sales Representatives reporting to them (Role C, subordinate to Role B), those Sales Representatives and their Opportunities are included as well.

Key Point

If users are unexpectedly included or excluded from an Opportunity Update Reminder report, review the Role Hierarchy configuration in Setup to verify which roles report to the role of the user who enabled the reminder. Adjust the Role Hierarchy as needed to control inclusion.