Aha! Roadmaps | Control workspace document access

Your workspace permissions determine how other workspace users can view and interact with documents, but you can set document-level permissions for individual users to control who can view, edit, and make configuration changes to them. This gives you granular control over who can view and update information on documents, ensuring the information you add to your workspace is ready to share when you are.

In this article, we are going to walk through the different levels of document access you can configure, from broad workspace-level defaults to granular permissions for individual users.

Click any of the following links to skip ahead:

• Overview

• Restrict document access

  • General access settings

  • Individual access settings

• View restricted documents

Overview

Workspace owners and contributors can control access to documents in your workspace on a per-document basis. Restrict who can manage a document (move it, delete it, or configure it), edit its content, or view it at all.

Click a document's Share menu and access its Workspace tab. From here, use a document's General access settings and Individual access settings to configure the document's restrictions and permissions.

• General access settings enable you to restrict access to a document for all users at once, overriding workspace permissions. They also allow you to update permission levels just for workspace reviewers.

• Individual access settings display after you restrict a document for All in its General access settings. They allow you to override the restrictions you put on the document for all users, and give additional permission for the document to an individual user.

In combination, these settings give you granular control over who can view, edit, and interact with an individual document.

For example, let's say you have an information security policy in your workspace documents that you need to be visible for everyone in your workspace. But only members of your security and legal team should be able to update the policy. You can configure your General access settings to restrict all users to view, then add a few users in the Individual access settings who can edit and manage the document.

Top

Restrict document access

Let's start with document access restrictions. Use these when you have a specific document that needs more restrictions than the defaults you set in your workspace settings — maybe the team schedule for an upcoming trade show. Everyone in your workspace needs to be able to see the schedule, but only a few people should be in charge of managing the document and editing its contents.

Before configuring a document's access settings, think about your current workspace defaults. These are determined by the different user permission levels in your workspace.

• Owner or Contributor: Workspace owners and contributors have the ability to edit and manage documents. They can add, remove, move, or configure fields on any workspace document, even if they did not add the document themselves.

• Reviewer: Reviewers are users you want to interact with your documents' contents, but not manage the records themselves. You can decide how workspace reviewers interact with documents in your workspace-level Document access settings.

  • Edit: These reviewers can edit the document's content or add comments to it. They cannot add, remove, move, or configure fields on any document records.

  • View: These reviewers can view documents, but not edit their content. This setting is useful for a workspace where reviewers should have Edit access except for a few specific documents that they should not be able to edit.

  Account customization admins can define reviewers' default access levels in your workspace settings. To do so, navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace Configure Document access. You can always change this default for individual documents.

• Viewer: Workspace viewers can view workspace documents, but they cannot edit their content.

To change a document's access settings, open it, then click Share. Click the Workspace tab, then use the General access settings to restrict the document. Once you have restricted a document, Individual access settings will be revealed, where you can configure access for individual users. We will go over these in another section.

General access settings

Configuring General access settings for a document will override the default access for users determined by their workspace permissions. There are two settings here to configure — All and Reviewer.

All

Use the All menu to restrict access to a document for every user in your workspace:

• Use workspace permissions: This option will be selected by default. It maintains the document access for users that is determined by their workspace user permissions.

• Review: Users who have the appropriate workspace-level user permissions will be able to edit a document's content and comment on it, but will not be able to manage the record itself.

• View: Users will be able to view the document but not interact with it.

• No access: No one can view, edit, or configure the document, except for individuals configured in the Individual access section of the Share menu. You might use this for information that only a handful of people in your workspace should have access to.

When you restrict access for all users, you will need at least one user configured in your Individual access settings who can edit and manage the document.

Reviewer

Next, you can override the default Document access settings define what reviewers can do for a particular document. If they can edit every document in your workspace, use this setting to define whether they should be able to edit this specific document.

These are the choices for reviewers:

• Inherited: The document starts with the default document access settings.

• Edit: Workspace reviewers can edit a document's content and add comments to it.

• View: Workspace reviewers can view the document but not interact with it.

Top

Individual access settings

Some documents need to go well beyond workspace-level defaults, or even settings for specific user permission levels. For these documents, you need to be able to configure access per individual user. The way to do this is to first restrict access for all users in the workspace, then grant certain users more access.

Once you have restricted access for all users in your General access settings, select a user from the Add users menu and configure their access individually:

• Edit and manage: If an individual user is a workspace owner or contributor, they will have full access to the document, able to edit its contents and manage the record itself. This access level is not available for other permission levels.

• Reviewer access: Remember, you can customize whether reviewers can Edit or View your document in the General access settings. If an individual user is a reviewer, this setting will grant them that access level. This access level is not available for workspace viewers.

• View only: Individuals will be able to view a document that is otherwise restricted to No access in General access settings.

You cannot give a user more permissions in a document than their workspace user permissions allow.

Top

View restricted documents

To keep important documents from becoming fully restricted and then forgotten, account administrators can see restricted documents from account-level settings.

Navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Shared records and documents Restricted documents. From here, you will see a table listing all documents in your account that are restricted. You will be able to see each restricted document's title, who created it, its type, and number of editors. In the Manage editors column, you can add or remove users who can have manage and edit a document.

Top