How to Control Who Can Edit Documents in Displayr

When you have a larger set of people at your organization using Displayr, it can become necessary to define which people are allowed to work on the documents in your account. In this article, I'll show you how to set up access permissions for editing a document. The basic process is to assign each of your authors to a user group and then specify which groups of users can access each document. The same process can be used to define groups of people, for example, clients, who are allowed to view each of your documents.

Each user in your account is a member of one or more user groups. Each document you create has settings that determine which users can edit or view the document. By creating user groups, assigning people to the right groups, and choosing which groups can access each document, you can control which of your users can work with different documents.

Requirements

• You must be an administrator on the Displayr account
  • If you are not already an administrator, ask your account administrator to follow the steps in Part 2 to add you to the Administrator user group. Also, your account must be set up as a multi-user account (for more on this, see How to Change to a Multi-User Account).
• A Displayr document

Method

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 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 have edit access to each document

With users and groups defined, you can now choose who has access to each of your documents. These steps should be included in the workflow of anyone responsible for creating new documents in your company.

1. Click the initials icon in the top right and select Documents.
2. Hover next to the document you want to modify the access for, click the three dots, and select Settings.
3. Expand the Access section.
4. Under View and edit access, select those groups that should have access to edit. In this example, I include Department A along with the default groups.
5. (Optional) If you also want to restrict who can view this document, you can do so at this time by making selections in the View access section.
6. Click Save.

Now, when Chris A logs in, he'll only be able to access this document (imaginatively called Department A - Project 1) and the Demo data that comes pre-loaded into all Displayr accounts.

Part 4: Setting the defaults

The Settings tab in Account Settings also contains options for specifying which groups are allowed to edit and view documents by default. It is also possible to specify:

1. The default user group is allowed to view, but not edit, a new document. For this, change the setting called New projects can be viewed by anyone in this group, and click Save.
2. The default user group is allowed to edit and also view a new document. For this, change the setting called New projects can be viewed and edited by anyone in this group, and click Save.

By controlling documents and user groups in the ways described above, you can ensure that the right people have access to the different documents in your account.

Next

How To Control Who Can View Your Documents in Displayr

Watch our New Users and Permissions video