Analytics » Sharing and Collaboration » Sharing Views to a User
In Virtutem Analytics you can easily share your data, reports and dashboards to any user privately. All the views shared will be accessible online from anywhere, anytime, to the shared user and there is no need for mailing them as attachments. The shared views will always be live and current reflecting the latest data/changes, whenever accessed by the shared users.
You can invoke the Sharing dialog using any of the following options:
On invoking the Share Views to New Users option, the following dialog will be come up as shown below.
In the Specify Users tab provide the list of users to whom you want to share the selected view(s). You need to provide the email id of the user with which he/she has registered the Virtutem Analytics account. You could also provide the Virtutem user id of the user instead of email id. Enter multiple user E-mail IDs or Virtutem user IDs one per line.
In case the user has not yet registered an account with Virtutem Analytics, you can still share the views to those user email ids. In this case, the user has to create a Virtutem Analytics account using the URL https://reports.virtutem.com/register.cc , with that user email id to access the view(s) that you have shared.
Add Users From option has been provided in Specify Users tab, which allows you to select users from the following contacts lists.
Adding Users from Existing Shared Users:
If you have already shared views in this database to others users and want to pick users quickly from this list to share, then you can easily to do so by clicking the option Add Users From -> Existing Shared Users. Clicking this option will open up the users list in a dialog as shown below. You can add the required users from the list by clicking on the corresponding contact (or on the +icon in the right) and have them added into the text area.
Adding users from Zoho Contacts:
If you have been using Zoho Mail or Zoho Contacts and have been maintaining your personal contacts in Zoho, then you could also select users from this contacts list and have them included for sharing. To do that, click on the option Add Users From -> Add From My Contacts. On clicking it will open up the contacts list in a dialog as shown below. You can add the required users from the list by clicking on the corresponding contact (or on the + icon in the right) and have them added into the text area. You can also search for the contact by using the search box provided.
Adding Users from Google Contacts:
If you want to select users from your personal Gmail account contacts list, you have to authenticate yourself with your Google account. To select users from your Google contacts, click on the option Add Users From -> My Google Contacts. A dialog box asking you to provide authentication credentials to access the contacts pops-up as shown below. Click Authenticate Google button to continue.
If you are not already logged in to your Google account in your current browser, you have to go through an extra step of signing into your Google account. After signing in to your Google account, click Grant Access button on another pop-up screen to continue. Clicking this option will open up the contacts list in your personal Gmail account in a dialog. You can add the required users from the list by clicking on the corresponding contact.
Adding Users from Google Apps Account:
If you are Google Apps user with Virtutem Analytics installed in your domain, then you can select users from your Google Apps users list, to share your views. Assuming that you have logged in to Virtutem Analytics with your Google apps account credentials, in Specify Users tab, click on the option Add Users From -> My Google App Users. On clicking it will open up the users list in your account in a dialog as shown below. You can add the required users from the list by clicking on the corresponding contact.
Important Note on Google Account/Google Apps Account: |
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Once you have included the users to Share the selected view(s), you click on the Next button to go to the Permissions tab.
In this tab you could grant the required permissions to the users for the views selected. Users will be able to execute only the granted operations on the views that has been shared to them.
Permissions are grouped under 4 high level categories:
Clicking the check box adjacent to each Permission group, will select all the permissions provided under that group. The following table describes the various permissions that could be granted to the users.
Read Options:
Read Access | Provides Read access to the shared users for the view(s) selected | Permission applicable to All Views |
Export Data | Provides Export permission to the view(s) selected. Shared users can export the view as CSV, PDF, HTML or Image based on the view type. | Permission applicable to All Views |
View Underlying Data | For Reports and Dashboards providing this permission will allow shared users to access the data underlying the view. This option will be available in the toolbar of the view. | Permission applicable only for Reports and Dashboards |
Write Options:
Add Row | Provides the permission to add rows in the table(s) shared to the user. | Permission applicable only to Tables |
Modify Row | Provides the permission to modify rows in the table(s) shared to the user. | Permission applicable only to Tables |
Delete Row | Provides the permission to delete rows in the table(s) shared to the user. | Permission applicable only to Tables |
Delete All | Provides the permission to delete all the rows in the table(s) shared to the user, using the "Delete All Rows" option available in the toolbar of the corresponding table. | Permission applicable only to Tables |
Import Options:
Only Append Rows | Provides Import permission to the user on the table(s) shared. During import users can only add/append rows into the table. | Permission applicable only to Tables |
Add or Update Rows | Provides Import permission to the user on the table(s) shared. | Permission applicable only to Tables |
Delete All Rows and Add New Rows | Provides Import permission to the user on the table(s) shared. With this permission users will be allowed to choose the option Delete existing records and add provided in the Import wizard. This will delete all the existing rows and add the currently imported data as new rows to the table. | Permission applicable only to Tables |
Share Option:
Share View/Child Reports | Provides sharing permission to the users on the shared views. With this permission users can further share the views (shared to them) to other users. | Permission applicable to All Views |
After providing the required permissions to the view(s) that are to be shared, click on the Next button to go to the Send Invitation Mail tab.
Virtutem Analytics allows you to apply a filter criteria while sharing a view/report/dashboard to users. When a report is shared to a user(s) with an associated filter criteria, the specified criteria will be applied on the report shared, there by filtering the data viewed, when the report is accessed by the user. This option provides you the flexibility to share the same report to different users but with appropriate criteria associated (data scope), so that everyone will see what is permitted to them in that report. This feature thereby reduces the need for creating multiple reports to address this need.
Lets say you want to share a Sales report, containing sales from all regions, to a Manager taking care of the East region, you can apply the criteria like " Sales.Region = 'East' " (assuming Region is a column in the data table Sales ) and share it to him. When the Manager accesses the report he will see the sales report with data only from East region and not all regions.
Virtutem Analytics provides a flexible way to define filter criteria. You can define it similar to a WHERE clause in SQL SELECT statement (Refer SQL SELECT WHERE clause documentation). You could also use SQL in-built functions as part of the criteria. These built-in functions should be the functions supported by any of ANSI, Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Sybase, Informix and PostgreSQL SQLdialects. Eg:- year(date_column) = 2011. Year is a inbuilt Date function in ANSI SQL and MySQL server, which returns year of the given date.
The generalized format of the expression of a simple filter criteria is:
(<Table name.column name/SQL expression/SQL function call><relational operator><value/Table name.column name/SQL expression/SQL function call>)
You can also combine basic expressions using the AND, OR and NOT logical operators to form a complex expression as the example given below.
(("Sales.Region"='South' AND "Sales.Sales"> 10000) OR ("Sales.Region"='West' AND "Sales.Sales" < 8000))
On providing a filter criteria as above, sales data of South region with product sales more than $10000 and sales data of West region with product sales more than $8000 (assuming Region and Sales are the columns in the data table Sales ) will not be displayed to the shared user.
Your content goes here...
To apply filter criteria:
Applying Criteria based on Multiple Tables:
In case of sharing a report that has been created over data spanning across multiple tables, you can define a filter criteria using columns from the corresponding related tables.
For example, let's assume that you have created a chart that displays sales made by each sales person by joining Sales and Sales Person tables (Refer here to know how to join Sales and Sales Person tables and to create Sales by each Sales Person chart). You can define a criteria as shown below, such that a shared user(s) can only see sales persons details who made sales less than $1000 in Fairfax city (assuming City is a column in the data table Sales Person and Sales is a column in Sales table ) in the report.
Your content goes here...
(("Sales Person.City" = 'Fairfax') AND ("Sales.Sales" < 1000))
Couple of Points to Note: |
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In this tab by selecting Send Invitation Mail option you can send Invitation mails to the shared user(s), with a link to access the shared views. In the Subject box and Message box, you could type your own subject and message you want.
Optionally, you can send a copy of the email to your Virtutem account email id. To do so, select the option Send a copy to me. Click Share to complete the sharing process.
Look for the message " The "view/table" has been shared to the users, Notification email has also been sent to the users.", that appears on the top right corner, confirming the sharing process.
If you want to edit the permission provided for the views shared or to remove sharing, you can use any of the following options provided:
This option will allow you to edit the permissions that you had granted to a view or to remove access to a shared user(s)/Database Group (dbgroup would be the name indicating a Database Group. Refer: Share views to Database Group to whom the view has been shared. You can access this option in any of the following ways:
A dialog will come up as shown below:
To remove access to a shared user(s)/dbgroup, click on Remove link adjacent to each shared member.
To edit the permissions granted to a shared view for a user/dbgroup, click on the corresponding Edit Permission link adjacent to each shared member. You can also select multiple users and click on the Edit Permissions button at the top to edit the permissions to all the users together. You can grant new permissions or remove previously granted permissions for the selected view by selecting/deselecting the corresponding check box in the Edit Permission dialog box (shown below). Click OK to complete the process.
Look for the message " Permissions have been successfully changed for the selected user(s)" at the top right corner of your screen, confirming the edit process.
This option lists all the users (including the database group) to whom you would have shared at least a view in this reporting database. You can edit/delete the granted permissions to a particular user with the corresponding options provided.
From "Explorer" Tab of the reporting database, invoke Share -> Edit Shared Details by User option on the tool bar. A Dialog box appears (as shown below) and lists all the shared users in this reporting database. It also displays other users to whom views in this database has been shared by your shared users.
If you wish to delete a user from the shared user list, click on the corresponding Remove User link.
Click on the + icon at the left hand side of a user(s) /dbgroup ( dbgroup name indicates the Database Group) to see the list of views shared to them, with the corresponding permissions granted for that particular view.
You can edit the permissions granted to a particular view by clicking on the corresponding Edit link. You can also remove access to a user by using the delete icon next to each view.
Click Close to complete the process.