ArcGIS Online Dashboards: Group-Based Visibility Control Possible?

JonJones1

Is it possible to create a single comprehensive ArcGIS Online dashboard and customize the visibility of data for different user groups by utilizing features such as "view layers" and user grouping?

Here's the scenario: I need to develop a dashboard for the president of my company, and he requires access to all the data available. Can I assign the president to a user group that provides unrestricted access to all dashboard data? Additionally, can I share the same dashboard with other employees and limit the information they see based on the specific states they are responsible for managing, perhaps by defining user groups and creating view layers?

In essence, my goal is to distribute a primary dashboard while ensuring that each group of users can only access the data relevant to their responsibilities. Is this functionality achievable within ArcGIS Online dashboards without the necessity of creating multiple versions? I'm eager to avoid duplicating the dashboard multiple times, which could lead to about 12 separate versions, and I'm hoping there's a more efficient way.

jcarlson

Definitely possible with a Data Expression. In a Data Expression, you have access to the function GetUser, which returns information about the currently logged in user, including any groups the user belongs to. You could use that list of groups to apply different filters.

 

var grps = GetUser()['groups']

var fs = FeatureSetByPortalItem(
  Portal('your portal url'),
  'itemid',
  0,
  ['fields'],
  false
)


if (Includes(grps, 'some admin group')) {
  return fs
} else {
  return Filter(fs, "where admins_only = 'yes'")
}

 

 

Now, this would still require the underlying feature layer to have the maximum level of access possible, so an enterprising user could follow the GET requests back to the server and just look at all the data anyway.

Here's a more complicated but interesting approach: change the feature service being accessed based on the group.

 

var grps = GetUser()['groups']

function SpecificView(itemid) {
  return FeatureSetByPortalItem(
    Portal('your portal url'),
    itemid,
    0,
    ['fields'],
    false
}

if (Includes(grps, 'first group')) {
  return SpecificView('itemid of first group view layer')
} else if (Includes(grps, 'second group')) {
  return SpecificView('itemid of second group view layer')
}

 

This has the potential of maybe breaking your dashboard, but only for certain kinds of users. Plus you can't adequately preview the dashboard unless you change the data expression or creating test users. But provided your different view layers had the same fields available, it may be possible.