Documentation forSolarWinds Platform

Restrict who can access reports in the SolarWinds Platform

This topic applies to all SolarWinds Platform products except for the following products:

ETSLAWPM

If you need to restrict users to access only specific reports, use report limitation categories.

Before you begin

Before you start using report limitation categories, review the following considerations and prepare a plan for restricting access to reports:

  • You can only assign one report limitation category to each report. For example, if you define a "finance" category to a report, only users with the "finance" restriction can access the report. Users with a "marketing" category won't see the report.

  • Users can only see reports from one report limitation category. You must decide what group of reports each user should be able to see: does the user need "finance" or "marketing" reports?

  • You cannot prevent users from accessing reports they created. When a user creates a report, the user becomes the owner of the report. Report owners can access the report, even if the report is not in the report limitation category assigned to the report owner.

  • You can prevent users from accessing all reports. To do so, apply the No Reports limitation to the user account.

  • You can allow administrator users to see all reports. To do so, apply the No Limitation Report Limitation Category to the user account.

Assign a report limitation category to a report

  1. Start creating or editing a report. To do so, click Reports > All Reports > Manage Reports.
  2. On the Properties page, expand Report Limitation.
  3. Specify the Report Limitation category:

    • To create a new category, click Add new and provide a name for the new category.
    • To use an existing limitation category, select it.

    Each report can have only one limitation.

  4. Complete the Add Report or Edit Report wizard. If you created a new report limitation and saved the report, the limitation is available in the user settings.

Specify the report limitation for a user

After the report limitation is saved, it is available in the user account's Define Settings page.

  1. Click Settings > All Settings > User Accounts.
  2. Select the user and click Edit.
  3. In the Report Limitation Category, select the limitation, and save your changes.

    The user can now access only reports in the selected limitation category and reports created by the user.

Enable an administrator to see reports from all limitation categories

When you create users with administrator rights, they have the Default report limitation category assigned. These administrators thus cannot see reports that belong to a custom, non-default report category, such as reports created by other users with administrator rights.

The built-in SolarWinds Platform admin account has the No Limitation report category applied by default and can thus access all reports.

To see all reports, provide the user with the No Limitation category.

  1. Click Settings > All Settings > User Accounts.
  2. Select the user and click Edit.

  3. In the Report Limitation Category, select the No Limitation category, and save your changes.

  4. The user can now see all reports, regardless of the limitation category they belong to.

Disable users from accessing all reports

To prevent a user from seeing all reports, specify the No Reports limitation category in the user account.

The No Reports limitation removes all access to reports when applied to a user account.

  1. Click Settings > All Settings > User Accounts.
  2. Select the user and click Edit.

  3. In the Report Limitation Category, select the No reports category, and save your changes.

  4. The user can now only access the reports s/he created.

Configure a report you created to be available only for your user account

If you want to keep a report you created private, set its Report Limitation Category to No Reports.

Administrators with the No Limitation category can access private reports.

  1. When creating or editing the report, go to the Properties tab.
  2. In the Report Limitation drop-down, select No Reports.
  3. Complete the wizard.

This way, the report will only be available to you.