How to Filter a Dashboard Based on User Logins

You can restrict what people see on a Displayr dashboard based on their department, geographic region, or some other user characteristic. For example, you can create a single report to present the results of an employee survey and share it with the managers in your business, and each manager will only see results for their departments.

In Displayr, people's logins can be organized into user groups. These groups are often used to determine which documents a person can view or edit. The user groups are also visible in the code in your document. Thus, you can create a document that responds and changes based on which user group the viewer belongs to. In this article, you will be taken through a simple example of a dashboard that shows different results based on the user's location.

Requirements

• A Displayr account with multiple user groups. For more information, see: How to Change to a Multi-User Account
• Experience writing custom R code. To start learning R, see: How to Learn R.
• Administrator-level access to your Displayr account if creating new user groups or inviting new users.

Method

Part 1: Set up User Groups

If the dashboard is to be filtered according to a person's user group, then you need to begin by creating user groups and assigning your users to them.

To create a group:

1. Click on the initials icon in the top right () and select Account Settings.
2. Select the Settings tab.
3. Scroll to the Groups section and select + New Group.
4. Enter a name for the Group.
5. Untick Users in this group can Explore. (Explore mode allows people to see other data in the data set, so you need to turn this off).
6. Click Save.

In addition to the default user groups (Administrators, Create/Edit Documents, and View Documents), I've created separate groups for each Australian state (ACT, NSW, NT, etc.) in this example. This way, I can filter a document's results by Australian state.

Part 2: Assign your users to groups

Next, to ensure that people only see results for a subset of the sample, each user requires an individual login and a correctly assigned user group. Importantly, you should avoid assigning these people to any groups that have access to the whole document. It will depend on how you have organized your groups, but typically, restricted users should NOT be part of the default groups like Administrators, Create/Edit Documents, or View Documents.

You can assign a user login to a user group when you first invite them to Displayr. To do so:

1. Go to the Settings tab.
2. Click the + New User button in the User section.
3. Enter the person's Name, Email, and any Notes.
4. Choose the appropriate group in the Group membership section.
5. Click Save.

In the example above, the user Cristin X will be added to the NSW user group when she accepts her invitation to join this Displayr account.

If you need to assign or change which group(s) an individual user is part of later on:

1. On the Settings page, scroll to the Users section.
2. Click the person's name.
3. Changing their Group membership selections, just as in the screenshot above.
4. Click Save.

If you want to update users in bulk via the Group settings:

1. On the Settings page, scroll to the Groups section.
2. Select the group you want to modify.
3. Click + Add Member.
4. Select the user(s) you wish to add to the group. Hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple.
5. OPTIONAL: To remove a user from a group, click the red X in the Action column.
6. Click Save.

Part 3: Create a Calculation to identify the user group

Your document must contain a Calculation that accesses the user groups for the person who is currently viewing the page. One example of the code that you can use is as follows:

1. Click Calculation > Custom Code from the toolbar and click on the page to place the calculation.
2. Paste the code below into the R Code section.
3. Click Calculate.
4. Hide this output by right-clicking the calculation and selecting Hide.

The code I am using in this example is:

#Set a new calculation UserGroups to the groups the current login is a part of
UserGroups = QViewModeUserGroups

#if UserGroups is null that means you are in edit mode and should see all respondents
if (is.null(UserGroups)) {
UserGroups = c('NSW', 'VIC')
}

#Administrators should see all respondents as well
if ("Administrators" %in% UserGroups) {
UserGroups = c('NSW', 'VIC')
}

###You can add more sections of logic like above to set UserGroups to the appropriate groups IF
###the name of their UserGroups isn't a category to use in the filter

#call the final UserGroup at the end
UserGroups

The output will look like this in Edit mode, but will not be visible when viewing the document as it is hidden:

Some notes on how this code works:

• The special Displayr variable QViewModeUserGroups is available to Calculations on the page.
• If you are in Edit mode, then the QViewModeUserGroups property returns a value of NULL. So the second part of the code checks for a NULL value, and in that case, manually assigns user groups NSW and VIC (for New South Wales and Victoria in Australia). When you want to test the appearance in Edit mode for a particular filter group, this is the line to change.
• The third part of the code determines what account administrators will see when viewing the document. Again, here I have assigned NSW and VIC, and this line can be changed when you want to see what a person from a specific user group will see.
• The final line calls the values of UserGroups. 

Part 4: Create a filter based on the user groups

Now that we have an output that declares what User Group the login is a part of, we need to construct an R Variable that uses the group names to make decisions about which cases should be shown. As I am working with a very simple example, my filter will simply match any respondents whose State variable from the survey matches any of the current user groups (as I've named my user groups the categories in the State variable).

1. Hover between any two variables in Data Sources until a + symbol appears.
2. Click the + and select Custom Code > R > Numeric.
3. Enter code like the example below into the R Code editor.
4. Click Calculate.
5. Enter a Name and Label for your new variable. Again, as this needs to be done for each page, it is good practice to label your filter according to the name of the page on which it is to be used.
6. Tick the Usable as a filter box.
7. Tick the Hidden in View Mode Filter menu box.

State %in% UserGroups

Some notes about this code:

• I am using the State variable from my dataset. This variable has categories which are the states of Australia (NSW, VIC, SA, etc). For simplicity, I have deliberately chosen my user groups to match the categories of this variable.
• I am using UserGroups since that is the Name of the custom calculation that I created in Part 3 above.
• I have used the %in% operator. This checks each respondent's State category and works out if it is included in the set of user groups for the person currently viewing this page. You should also use %in% if you suspect there is missing data for the variable being used.
• Depending on the setup of your user groups and how you need to work out which respondents should be included in the sample for each user group, you will likely need to use more complicated logic.

Part 5: Filter your page

To make use of your new filter, you need to apply it to the outputs on your pages.

1. Holding CTRL on your keyboard, click on all of the tables and visualizations that need to be filtered. You can also select whole Pages or Folders to apply the filter to all outputs (if that is easier).
2. In the Object Inspector, use Data > Filters and Weight > Filter(s) to apply this filter variable.

Part 6: Edit the document settings

Now that you have a document ready to go, you need to ensure that all of the user groups have been given permission to view this document.

1. Click on Document Settings > Document Settings.
2. A new tab will open. Expand the Access section.
3. In the View access section, select the user group(s) that you created for this document in Part 1 above.
4. Click Save.

Part 7: Publish

Finally, you need to publish your document as a Private Web Page. To do so:

1. Select Share > Publish to web.
2. Under Who has access, choose Login and password required.
3. Click Publish (or Republish).

The link will now be available to copy and share with others, the Open in new tab button will take you to the published version, and the Save button will return you to your document.

Testing

There are two main approaches for testing the function of your dashboard. The first is to use a testing account as follows:

1. Add a test user (using the steps in Part 3 above) with an email address that is different from the one you use to log in to Displayr. It should be an email account that you have access to so that you can confirm and change the password.
2. Add the test user to the group that you want to test.
3. Log out of Displayr and log in again with this test account, or start a Private Browsing or Incognito window in your browser (CTRL + SHIFT + N in Chrome or CTRL + SHIFT + P in Firefox) and log in with the test account.

To test a different group, simply modify the group membership of your test account (as in Part 3 above).

An alternative is to modify the code in Part 3 to determine which group name is provided to Displayr when you view your document from your Administrator account. This will allow you to test different scenarios by modifying the code.

Next

How to Publish a Document as a Web Page (Dashboard)

How to Control Who Can View Your Documents in Displayr

How to Control Who Can View Pages in Your Document

How to Partition a Document for Multiple Stakeholders

How to Restrict User Access to Individual Pages within a Document

How to Give Groups of Users Access to a Document