Protect your scorecards with goal-level permissions

APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop Power BI service

In many organizations, different roles should have access to view and update different goals. For example, maybe only managers should see goals related to human resources and finances, while all employees can view goals related to operations.

With goal-level permissions, these scenarios are easily accomplished. In this article, we go over how to set up goal-level permissions for your scorecard.

Get started

Goal-level permissions let you set specific view and update permissions at the goal level to help achieve your business scenario.    Follow these steps to get started setting up your permissions.

  1. On the Metrics hub page, select the scorecard you want to update.

  2. Select the Edit pencil.

  3. Select the Settings cog to open the Scorecard settings pane.

  4. Select the new Permissions tab.

  5. Select Add role or select More options (...) for an existing role to open the Role settings page.

    Screenshot of opening goal-level permissions by accessing the scorecard settings and selecting permissions.

On the Role settings page, you can create roles with different permission sets and assign those roles to specific user groups. We support different types of permissions at the goal level:

  • View permissions: Grant access for users to view specified goals within a scorecard.
  • Update permissions: Grant access for users to update or check in specific aspects of a goal. There are a few options available under update permissions.

You can select any combination of the following options: - Note: Grants access to add notes in a check-in. - Status: Grants access to update status in a check-in. - Current: Grants access to update the current value in a check-in.

Screenshot of the goal-level permission settings open and editable.

Inheritance

The last checkbox for permission settings is Set for all. This checkbox supports inheritance for all future subgoals. If you select Set for all  for a specific goal, all subgoals (existing and future) adopt the specific permissions you set for that goal. This option allows you to future proof your goal-level permissions.

Set a default

Another aspect of goal-level permissions is enabling a default permission model that applies to anyone accessing the scorecard.  You can create a role with any combination of permissions you choose. If you make that the default permissions, then anytime anyone lands on the scorecard, they see exactly what the scorecard author selects.   

The default permissions apply to anyone accessing the scorecard who isn't a member of another role already. If someone is a member of another role, they assume those permissions over the default permissions.

  • Select More options (...) in the role card and then select Set as default.

    Screenshot of setting a role to become the default role from the More options menu.

Goal-level permissions roles apply to the underlying scorecard semantic model we generate, except for the default role. For example, say you create a role and assign the sales team view access to five goals on the scorecard. Those five goals are the ones they see in the underlying semantic model as well.

Default permissions don't apply to the underlying semantic model. If I give view permissions to all goals as the default role, anyone who adopts those default permissions can't access any goals in the underlying semantic model.

Share the scorecard

After you create roles and set up permissions, the final step is to share the scorecard with users.

  • Select the Share button in the ribbon, same as you would share a normal report.

    If you don't want to give permissions to the underlying scorecard semantic model, in the Share dialog clear the option Allow recipients to build content with the data associated with this report to give build permissions to the underlying report.

Workspace roles and scorecard roles

Workspace roles are separate from goal level permissions roles. Workspace permissions give view or build access to the workspace. However, you can use goal-level permissions to restrict access so that certain people can only see certain goals and perform check-ins within a scorecard. Goal-level permissions are different from workspace edit permissions. To give full edit access to the scorecard, assign someone a contributor or member role on the workspace. See Roles in workspaces for details about workspace roles.

More information

The support for automatic roles based on goal-level permissions (full row-level security (RLS) support) isn't yet available.