Tip #754: How to secure your views

Private viewCRM is very good at securing data but there is no way to control visibility of the system views for the end-users. There are good reasons why would anyone want that:

  1. Systems grow over the time and it’s hard to control retirement process for old views, especially for large implementations. As a result, list of available system views tend to grow out of control.
  2. If record is required on multiple customized sub-grids, chances are each sub-grid will potentially require yet another system view.
  3. Remove views that are broken for a user/team. Your view may include fields from a parent entity users do not have access to. They will see “You do not have permissions…” error plastered all over the grid.
  4. Simplify UI and provide better experience for the end-users. Tailor their experience by role and only show views that are applicable for their role.
  5. When users ask for a new “report”, quite frequently they mean “give me the list of records satisfying certain criteria”. A.k.a. view.

Lucky for us, views can be shared:

  • Create a handful of universal views that make sense for everyone, e.g. “My accounts”, “Overdue invoices”, and implement them as system views
  • If you would like to restrict view to a specific user/team, create a personal view and then share “read” access to it with the user/team.

The only drawback of this approach is that users will see these “private” views under “My Views” subheading. Oh, and you won’t be able to use these views in system charts/dashboards, or subgrids.

4 thoughts on “Tip #754: How to secure your views

  1. Stig Højmark Jensen says:

    For shared personal views, I recommend that all users are instructed to share these with the system administrator with full access rights. It is a hell to find the original creator of a shared view if, at some point, you want to get rid of it again end noone remembers who created the view and shared it with everyone in the organization.

  2. Tal Simon says:

    Its also an issue to move personel views between environments. Although with xrm tools it is more easy.

  3. Abdul khader says:

    These views can be import into the system from managing solutions. Admin or user has to create the same again in production from staging.

  4. Jill Vazquez says:

    Has anyone found that shared personal views are not visible to the share-ees on the mobile app? I had been thinking about using this method but have not gotten around to implementing it yet. I just shared a personal view with a bunch of users yesterday and found that they are not able to see it from the mobile app. I could only find one post about this issue and no solution.

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