You use Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) 2010 in your company network. The HR department has multiple Microsoft SQL Server databases. Each of these databases has Management Agents (MAs) configured…

Clearing the 'Use equal precedence' check box is required because equal precedence distributes authority evenly across all MAs, which prevents designating specific MAs as authoritative sources; disabling it allows precedence ordering to be applied.

Selecting 'Use manual precedence' enables administrators to explicitly define the order in which Management Agents contribute to an attribute value, allowing HR Data and HR Data Secondary to be ranked as the authoritative sources for the Department attribute.

Configuring import attribute flows as Direct only supports a simple one-to-one mapping and cannot implement the conditional or multi-source precedence logic required when two MAs share authority over the same attribute.

Configuring the Department import attribute flows as Advanced (Rules Extension) is necessary when multiple MAs need to act as co-authoritative sources, as it allows custom code to implement complex precedence logic that determines which MA's value wins when both provide the Department attribute.

Export attribute flows control how data is written back to connected data sources, not how authoritative source precedence is determined for inbound attribute values flowing into the metaverse.

Increasing (raising the numeric value of) the precedence order would actually lower the priority of HR Data and HR Data Secondary, since in FIM lower order numbers indicate higher precedence, meaning increasing the order number would make them less authoritative, not more.