On larger projects, you may need to build reports or dashboards that contain results relevant to different groups of people. For example, your customer satisfaction report may have pages for each department of your client's business. In some cases, you might not want everybody to have access to all of the results, but only results that are relevant to their department. In this article, I will show you how to set up your account and document to control who gets to see each set of results.
If you don't need to control access to individual pages within your document, but just need to control access to each document, please read How to Control Who Can View Your Documents in Displayr.
Requirements
- A Displayr Document that has been published as a web page with Login and password required.
- Administrator-level access to your Displayr account.
Method
The basic process for controlling who can view pages in your documents is as follows:
- Create a User Group for each level of access (e.g. department).
- Assign the people to the relevant groups. This is done when you invite new people to join your account, and you may also change the settings for existing user accounts.
- Set up tab-based access in your document to choose which groups can see each page.
- Ensure your published document requires users to log in with a password.
To complete these steps you must be an account administrator, and your account must be set up as a multi-user account (for more on this, see How to Change to a Multi-User Account).
Part 1: Create user groups
The first step is to work out how you want to group the people who will be using your document, and then create groups to reflect that desired structure. In my example, I will create two user groups in my account.
To add a group:
- Log in to Displayr.
- Click on the initials icon () in the top right and select Account settings.
- Go to the Settings tab, scroll down to the Groups section, and select + New Group.
- Enter a Group name, and click Save.
I have added two new groups to my account, called Department A and Department B. My intention is to assign any viewers who should view results for Department A to that group, and similarly for people in Department B. The Groups section in my account settings now looks like this:
There are three default groups:
- Administrators - these people can access all documents and settings in your account.
- Create/Edit Documents - by default, these people can edit and view all documents in your account.
- View Documents - by default, these people can view but not edit all documents in your account.
If you are restricting access to users then do not add restricted users to any of these groups, as they will be able to access other documents and pages.
Part 2: Assign users to groups
Now that groups have been defined, new accounts can be assigned to those groups. When you invite someone to join your account you can specify which groups they are in. You can also change which groups someone is in at a later time.
You can invite a new user to your account by clicking the + New User button in the Users section of your Settings page. If you are inviting a new user to your account, you can choose the group(s) that the user belongs to at the time. For example, when inviting my first user, Cristin X, I assign them to Department A and fill out the fields before clicking Save (which will send the invitation).
If you need to assign or change which group(s) a person is in later on:
- On the Settings tab, scroll down to the Users section.
- Click the person's name.
- Make selections in the Group membership section (just as in the screenshot above).
- Click Save.
Part 3: Choose which groups can view each page (tab-based access)
With users and groups defined, you can now choose who has access to each page of your document. This is known as the tab-based access settings. These steps should be included in the workflow of anyone who is responsible for creating new documents in your company. They can only be done once you have created some pages in your project. Settings can be updated later on when needs change or when new pages are added.
As an example, I've created a super-basic dashboard with pages for my two different departments. When editing, it looks like this:
Next, I'll adjust the document settings so that only people assigned to the group for Department A can see the first page, and similarly for Department B.
- Click the Tools button in the upper left corner and select Document Settings.
- Expand the Properties section.
- Scroll down and click Set tab-based access to document.
- Next to the name of each of your pages (Tab), click into the box and select which User Groups should be allowed to view that page. You can make multiple selections by holding CTRL or SHIFT when clicking.
- Click Save.
Note that the settings page here will inform you of any user groups who already have access to the entire document. People whose viewing is to be restricted should not be given membership to these groups.
Part 4: Publishing your document
In order for these settings to apply, you need to ensure that your document requires a person to log in with their password to view it. This is a choice that you make the first time you publish your document via Share > Publish to web > Login and password required in the toolbar.
Now, when someone who is in the group Department A views the document, all they will see is the first page (of course you can make yours look prettier than mine!):
So remember, there are a few key steps to restricting access on a page-by-page basis. First, you need to create user groups that define the levels of access, just like my departments in this example. Second, you need to make sure that you create accounts for the people who will view the document, and that each person is assigned only to the group that relates to their access. Finally, you need to set tab-based access within the document to specify which groups of people can see each page.
We hope you found this helpful - check out Displayr Help for more articles with tips and tricks!
Next
How to Control Who Can View Your Documents in Displayr
Watch our New Users and Permissions video