Analytics » Sharing and Collaboration » Sharing Views to a User

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.

 Sharing Views to Users

You can invoke the Sharing dialog using any of the following options:

  • To share a individual view, open the corresponding view and invoke the   Share > Share Views to New Users   option in the toolbar.

  • To share views in a folder, click the   Action   icon that appears on mouse over and select   Share views in this folder > To New Users .

  • To share multiple views in the reporting database, open Explorer tab, select the views that needs to be shared and invoke the   Share > Share Views to New Users   option in the toolbar.

On invoking the   Share Views to New Users   option, the following dialog will be come up as shown below.

Step 1:  Specify Users to Share

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.

  • Existing Shared Users
  • ZOHO Contacts
  • Google Contacts
  • Google Apps Users

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:

  • You will not be permitted  to provide authenticate with Google login credentials, if you are currently logged in to Virtutem Analytics with your Google account (Google/Google Apps) or if you are already logged in to your Google account in your current browser session.
  • You can access your Google Apps contacts only when you are logged into Virtutem Analytics with your Google Apps account credentials. This option will not be listed, if you are not logged into Virtutem Analytics with your Google Apps account credentials.

Once you have included the users to Share the selected view(s), you click on the   Next   button to go to the Permissions   tab.

Step 2:  Granting Permissions to Users

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:

  • Read Options: This groups all the operations that are related to providing read access to the view(s) selected
  • Write Options: This groups all the operations that are related to providing write access to the view(s) selected
  • Import Options: This groups all the operations that are related to importing data into Virtutem Analytics.
  • Share Options: This groups all the operations that allows users to share the view(s) to other users

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.
You can also click on specific points in the report to view the underlying data corresponding to that point in the report.

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.
With this permission users will be able to  add new rows , as well as  update existing rows  with the data that is being imported.

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. 
Incase a table has been shared to a user then the user can create reports and dashboards over the table. If the Share permission is given for the table while sharing, then the shared user can also share the reports & dashboards created over it 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.

Step 3:  Applying Filter Criteria

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:

  • In   Filter Criteria   tab, type the criteria that you want to apply in the   Specify Filter Criteria   text box. You can insert table columns into your expression either by typing them in or by clicking on the required column from the list provided under   Insert Columns pane.
  • Select   Apply Parent Table Filter Criteria   option, if you want to include parent table's criteria with the criteria you are specifying now i.e., If you have already shared a table (parent table) to a user with a specific filter criteria and now your are sharing a report built on that table to the same user, then parent table criteria will be AND'ed with the above given criteria on selecting this option.

  • After creating the required filter expression, click   Preview   link to validate/verify your filter criteria. This will bring up a   Filter Criteria - Preview   window displaying the report shared after applying the filter criteria specified, as shown below. If the criteria is not valid, an error message will be displayed in the Preview window.

  • Once you are satisfied with your criteria results, click   Next   to continue the sharing process.

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:

  •  Remember that  Filter Criteria   tab in Sharing dialog will be shown as   disabled   in the following scenarios:
    • When Sharing  multiple views at a time.
    • When a  shared user of a view, wanted to share it to other users.
  • When sharing  a child table, parent table's criteria cannot be included with the filter criteria using   Apply Parent Table Criteria   option.

Step 4:  Sending Invitation Mail

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.

 Editing Existing Shared Details

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:

  • Edit Shared Details by View
  • Edit Shared Details by User

 Edit Shared Details by View

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:

  • From "Explorer" Tab of the reporting database, select the view whose shared details you wish to modify and invoke the   Share ->   Edit Existing Shared Details by View   menu in the toolbar.

  • Open the corresponding view that has been shared and invoke the   Share ->   Edit Existing Shared Details   in the toolbar.

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.

 Edit Shared Details by Users

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.

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