Dashboard Permissions

In the Access and Permissions article, you would've understood the accountability and permissions that can be granted, and how permissions provide access control and privacy. Here, let us see how access and permissions work at a granular level in dashboards.

A dashboard can either be set as a 

• public dashboard, i.e., setting up either "can edit" or "can view" for all the members of the workspace.

• or, private dashboard, i.e., setting up "no access" to the dashboard to maintain absolute privacy. For example, the dashboard has sensitive company information, financial KPIs, which need not be exposed to everyone. This is available in Essentials and Enterprise+ tiers.

By default, when a dashboard is created, it is set up as a "private" dashboard, i.e., nobody in the workspace will be able to view or edit the dashboard except for admins and the one who created the dashboard. 

If you wish to share your private dashboard, then you can invite those people or teams by typing in their names or mail addresses, and click Share. These people and team members will then have access to this private dashboard.

But, say, you're ok with everyone viewing your dashboard, then you can change it to All members in this workspace can edit. 

Apart from this high-level access, you can enable access permissions at a user level too. By default, whoever creates the dashboard becomes its Owner, however, they can be changed from the dashboard's Settings. Except for the owner and those with admin privileges, you can restrict the permissions on a dashboard at the workspace level from the Share modal.

Click Share against the dashboard name to share the dashboard with the teams or users in your workspace. Type their email addresses or names, give view-edit access, and click Share. They'll receive a notification (if enabled) that a dashboard is shared with them.

Irrespective of whatever access you assign the Admin and Viewer, they'll automatically inherit the edit access in case of admins, and view access in the case of viewers. You can revoke someone's access at any time, by clicking remove from the dropdown against their name from this window.

When access is given at a team level (see Team Permissions), then

• all the members of that team inherit the default view or edit access that you assign the team,

• within a team, viewers get default view access, while admins get default edit access,

• a team member once removed from that team, will no longer the access that's assigned to the team. However, if the team member is the owner of the dashboard or given exclusive view/edit access, then they'll still retain that access to the dashboard, irrespective of they being removed from the team. You need to manually change their access from the Share modal.

Only those with edit permissions on a dashboard can duplicate or delete them.

FAQs

Can I change the owner to someone else?

Yes, click the three dots against the dashboard name, and click Settings. You'll be able to change the owner from here if you're an Admin or have edit permissions. Remember that you can only add a person who's already there in the workspace. Also, you cannot add a Viewer as owner.

What happens if a viewer is part of a team which is assigned edit access?

You'll see a modal listing the viewers in that team, and you can either click Invite anyway to invite them to share the access, or click Upgrade to upgrade to Admin, Manager or Contributor roles to enjoy full access.

When they're invited without upgrading, they'll still retain only the view access and will not be able to edit.

If the ownership is changed, will the access permissions be retained?

No, once the ownership of a dashboard is changed, all their access have to re-enabled manually.

I've some sensitive data in my dashboard which I do not want to expose to other users in my workspace.

You can set the dashboard as private, i.e., "no access" for everyone in the workspace. This way, no one will have access to this sensitive information and you can have absolute privacy. Unless someone has an Admin access, they'll not find this dashboard in their dashboard list.

I'm a HR head and have created a dashboard that contains data related to HR team. Though everyone can see this dashboard, I do not want any person other than my team to edit this dashboard.

In this case, you can set the dashboard as "can view" for all the members of the workspace and, type the name of the team, and grant them "can edit" access. So, while this dashboard can just be viewed by everyone else, only the HR team members will have edit permissions and can work on the widgets of this dashboard.

I'm drafting an early version, and do not want it to be available to a wider audience. However, I want a few of them to weigh in and give feedback alone.

You can set the dashboard as private, i.e., "no access" to everyone in the workspace, and give "can view" access to the relevant people from the Share modal. Those who have "view access" can just view and provide comments in your dashboard.

We're working on pulling insights for the upcoming All Hands Meeting. Though this data can be viewed by everyone, we want to restrict editing to leadership level.

Set the dashboard as public i.e., "can view" to everyone in the workspace, and give "can edit" access to the relevant people. If you've a Leadership team that has all those members, then you can simply assign "can edit" permissions to that team. Those with "can edit" permission can work on the widgets itself.

During the free trial period, I had set permissions to dashboards. What happens once the free trial is over?

Once the trial is over, none of these permissions are changed. 

For example, you've set the "Company Board" dashboard to "no access" during trial. After the trial, in case, you've not upgraded, then the dashboard will still retain its privacy. And, you cannot change its access to public, nor can you provide anyone else view/edit access, since permission is behind paywall. Only the admins who've overriding permissions will still have access to this dashboard. 

Also, if you had enabled view/edit permissions to anyone else who is not an Admin, before the trial ended, they'll also retain those view/edit permissions.

Can I export the dashboard or share them externally?

Not at this point. You can neither export nor share it with anyone outside your workspace.

I'm an Admin, and am still not able to grant anyone access. My free trial period just got over.

Permissions are behind paywalls. Even if you're an admin, if the free trial is over, you'll not enjoy those benefits of a paid tier. Please upgrade to paid tier to experience Cascade to its fullest.

I've data from private plans in my dashboard.

If you wish not to expose this data to others, then you can set the dashboard as "private", and manually give view or edit access to the relevant people in your workspace. However, if you wish to keep this as "public", do not worry. Those who do not have access to that private plan will not be able to edit the data source nor will they be able to look into the details from the Sidebar.