How to Control Who Can View Pages in Your Document

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.
• A multi-user Displayr account (for more on this, see How to Change to a Multi-User Account).
• Familiarity with User Group permissions. See How to Manage User Groups and Permissions in Displayr for more details.
• You have purchased Server time for private dashboards and API (hours for View-mode). Found under Account Settings > Licenses > Server time for private dashboards and API.

Method

The basic process for controlling who can view pages in your documents is as follows:

1. Create a User Group for each level of access (e.g., department).
2. 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.
3. Set up Page-based access in your document to choose which groups can see each page.
4. Ensure your published document requires users to log in with a password.

Part 1: Create user groups

There are three default groups in Displayr:

• Administrators - these people can access all documents and settings in your account.
• Create/Edit Documents - by default, these people can create, 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 default groups, as they will be able to access other documents.

The first step is to work out how you want to group the people in your organization, 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:

1. While logged into Displayr, click on the initials icon in the top right and select Account settings.
2. Go to the Settings tab.
3. Scroll to the Groups section and select + New Group.
4. Enter a name for the Group.
5. OPTIONAL: Untick Users in this group can Explore if you are filtering a dashboard based on user login.
6. Click Save.

I have added two new groups to my account, called Department A and Department B. My intention is to assign any staff who should have access only to work done by Department A to that group, and similarly for people in Department B. The Groups section in my account settings now looks like this:

Part 2: Assign users to groups

Now that groups have been defined, new users 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.

If you are inviting a new user to your account, you can choose the group(s) that the user belongs to at that time. For example, when inviting my first user, Chris A, I assign him to Department A and fill out the fields below before clicking Save (which will send the invitation).

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 User 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: Choose which groups can view each page (Page-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:

Ensure that your document has first been published via Share > Publish to Web.

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.

1. Click Document Settings next to your document's name and select Document Settings.
2. Expand the Access section.
3. Scroll down and click Set page-based access to document.

4. 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. 

   

5. Click Save.

Note that the settings page here will inform you of any user groups that already have access to the entire document. People whose viewing is to be restricted should not be given membership in these groups.

Note: If your document is located within a folder with configured access, the user groups added to Page-based access will automatically be appended to the folder permissions to allow access to the folder. See How to Manage User Groups and Permissions in Displayr for more details.

Part 4: Publishing your document

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.

Now, when someone who is in the group Department A views the document, all they will see is the first page:

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.

Next

How to Control Who Can View Your Documents in Displayr

Watch our New Users and Permissions video