Confidential Reporting & Content Access Control

20 min

This article explains Ashby Analytics content access control. Learn how to make reports and dashboards private or public for your organization's users, and how to share private reports with specific individuals.

The content access controls described in this article, which the exception of dashboard locking, are available on all Ashby Plans.

Foundations	Legacy Plus	Plus	Enterprise
✅**	✅	✅	✅

**Dashboard locking is not available on Foundations plans because Foundations does not provide custom dashboard creation.

Content access vs permissions

In Ashby Analytics, reports and dashboards are thought of as "content." Making a report or dashboard private to yourself, shared with a restricted set of users, or shared with your entire organization is the focus of Content Access Control. What results show up in a report (for example, whether a user sees a summary including all departments and jobs versus a summary that shows only the Engineering department) is the focus of Permissions, sometimes referred to as data access control.

Content access: controls what content, reports, or dashboards a user is allowed to view.

Permissions: controls what data is available in reports or dashboards.

If you want to restrict what results users see in their reports, see User PermissionsUser Permissions.

Content access in Ashby

In Ashby, you can restrict access to both reports and dashboards. There are two states content can be in:

Private: restricts access to you and anyone on the access list

Public: shared with your organization and viewable by any Ashby user

Upon saving new content, you have the choice of making it private or public. The default option is to create public content. Toggle the Private Report setting on if the report should be private.

Change access settings

Admin users can adjust access settings at any time. You can view the access settings under the More menu, with an open or closed lock icon indicating whether the content is public or private.

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Making a report private or public

To learn how to build reports, see Report Builder & AI-Assisted Report Builder .

A public report can be made private at any time by selecting More in the upper right corner and then Access.

Then, select Make Private. This will open a screen where you can manage access to the private report. See the next section to Confidential Reporting & Content Access Control.

Making private removes all access to the report and removes the report from any private dashboards that are private to more than just you. Because this action can affect other users' experience, Ashby asks you to confirm the choice in a two-step process.

You can make the report public again by navigating to More > Access > Make Public > Remove access restrictions. When making a private report public, Ashby asks for confirmation, as the report becomes accessible to all Ashby users.

Manage access to private content

You can share any private content with other users by adding them to the access list. Only the content author has the option to enable further access management by users on the access list, by toggling the Allow Sharing option.

The primary content access management options are:

Click Make Public to make the content public, granting all organization users access

Add additional users to the access list by searching for them and selecting them from the drop-down, or select the trash can icon next to a user's name to remove them from the access list

Check the Allow sharing box to allow users on the access list to add the report to dashboards and add other users to the access list

Select Revoke All Access to make the report strictly private

Revoking all access removes access to the report from all users and removes the report from all dashboards that are not private to you. Because this choice may affect other users' experience, Ashby requires a two-step confirmation:

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Lock or unlock a report

Users with an Admin license can lock or unlock a report to prevent other users from making changes or accidental edits. Only the user who locked the report can unlock it.

If a report is unlocked, the button says Unlocked and the lock icon is open.

If a report is locked, the button says Locked, shows a closed lock icon, and is golden yellow.

To lock a report, click the button that says Unlocked and select Lock report.

To unlock a report, click the button that says Locked and select Unlock report.

If the user who locked a report has been deactivated or terminated, any Organization Admin can unlock the report.

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Things to note when adding reports to dashboards

Keep the following in mind when adding reports to dashboards:

Add report to dashboard: After a report is added to a dashboard, it is accessible to everyone who has access to the report directly and everyone who has access to the dashboard. If a user has access to the report by having access to the dashboard, they can also view the report on its own (outside the dashboard in the saved report view).

Remove report from dashboard: Anyone who had access to the report solely by having access to the dashboard no longer has access to the report.

Remove user from report access control list: If the removed user does not have access to any dashboard the report is on, this action removes the user's access to the report. If they do have access to a dashboard the report is on, the user continues to have access to the report.

Dashboard access: public, private, locked, unlocked

To learn how to build a dashboard, see Building Your First Dashboard .

Similar to reports, dashboards can be public or private. Public dashboards are available to your organization. Private dashboards are available only to the author and users on the dashboard's access list.

Dashboards can also be locked or unlocked. Dashboard locking freezes the dashboard's reports, layout, and available filters and controls who can change the dashboard configuration. It also lets you control whether users can copy the dashboard or create scheduled deliveries.

Private reports on dashboards

It is possible to add a private report to any dashboard. In doing so, you grant users with access to the dashboard access to the report. Because dashboards and reports have separate access lists, the access list for the report may be empty (apart from you). If any other users have access via a dashboard, you see the Revoke All Access button, allowing you to enforce strict privacy and remove access to the report from all users.

A report with no users explicitly on the access control list, but the "revoke all access" option being present alerts you that users have access to this report via dashboards.

A report with no users on the access control list, but the "revoke all access" option alerts you that users have access to this report via dashboards.

Configure dashboard access settings

Data visibility continues to follow the viewer's permissions, unless View with my permissions is enabled. For more on how this works, see Permissions & Sharing Dashboards.

To manage dashboard privacy, locking, and sharing settings:

Navigate to the dashboard.

Select More > Access.

Select whether the dashboard is public or private.

Select whether the dashboard is locked or unlocked.

Locking protects the dashboard configuration only. It does not lock the underlying reports. Users who can edit the underlying reports can still modify those reports directly.

Add users to the access list and assign each user a Viewer or Editor role.

Choose whether users can copy the dashboard and whether they can manage scheduled deliveries by checking the corresponding checkboxes for these permissions.

How dashboard access roles work on locked dashboards

The dashboard locker and users with the Editor role can modify the dashboard's permissions, access list, layout, and content. On a private, locked dashboard, grant users the Viewer role to provide view-only access. A public, locked dashboard will allow view-only access to all users who can see public dashboards.

Copying is disabled by default when a dashboard is locked, but can be enabled using the checkboxes on the lock options screen. Scheduled-delivery management is also disabled for users with dashboard access by default. Editors can manage scheduled deliveries, and the dashboard owner can allow other users with access to manage them.

Dashboard locking and shared views

When you configure a dashboard to show data using a specific user's permissions through View with my permissions, Ashby also locks the dashboard. The user whose permissions are shared becomes the locker.

Viewing who locked a dashboard

To see who locked a dashboard, you can hover over the locked indicator either in the top left of the dashboard, or on your saved dashboards list.

In the saved dashboard list, you can select + Add Column and add the Locked By column to add that data to the list view.

FAQ

What should I do if a report or dashboard is locked and the user who locked it no longer works for our organization?

For reports, reach out to an Organization Admin, as they can unlock the report. If you do not know who your Organization Admin is, reach out to us at [email protected].

For dashboards, if the locker is deactivated or no longer available, an Organization Admin who can access the dashboard can unlock it. An elevated access user can also be granted the Administer dashboard access permission so they can unlock dashboards and manage dashboard access for dashboards they can view.

Users with the Editor role can also manage the locked dashboard's permissions, access list, layout, and content.