Why do other employees see different contacts (and other data) than I do?

If you are logged in as an employee, you may notice that sometimes the data you see does not match the data another employee sees. This can occur in several scenarios related to the security settings of your business. There are two different types of security that can affect this: Data Level Access, and Role Based Access Control.

What is role based access control?

This feature allows an administrator to define security roles for each employee, and these roles grant access to different apps & functionality within the business. A user will not be able to work within App without any security roles, and you can read more about assigning security roles here. These roles will grant access to use a specific app, and also determine whether a user has read-only, standard access, or access to configuration.

What is data level access?

Data level access is a bit different from security roles, as they place restrictions on individual objects (contacts, customers, leads, opportunities, cases, or projects), rather than the entire app. This means two employees may have the same exact security roles, but they can still see different data. This setting is used when a business does not want other employees to view what their colleague's are working on.

How do I enable or disable data level access?

Data level access exists within many different apps in the system, but this feature works the same within each app. Inside of the general settings for an app, you can either enable or disable this feature. Check here for an example of changing data level access in the projects app.

What happens when data level access is enabled?

When this setting is enabled, employees will only be able to view objects which are directly associated to them. In each app, there will either be a field to assign the object to an employee, or in the case of projects, you have a "team" tab to include all employees who should access the project.

What will managers & administrators see?

Once the object is assigned to someone, it will only be visible to them, or their manager. This manager can be set up within the employees app, and this security will pass up through as many managers as needed. This means Employee A can have a manager of Employee B. And Employee B can have a manager of Employee C. If a contact is assigned to Employee A, all three employees see the object. If a contact is assigned to Employee B, then only B & C will see it.

In addition to the managerial hierarchy, any business administrator (the original account creator) will always have access to view 100% of the objects within the system, regardless of data level access settings.

Assigning objects to a team instead of employee?

Another way to allow multiple employees to view the same object is by building employee teams. There is a separate Teams App, which is part of the human resources category. You are able to create a team of employees. Then, you can assign an object to that team of employees, and all members of the team (and their managers) will be able to view that object.

Learn more about Security

If you are interesting in learning more about our security features, take a look at our frequently asked questions page. Or, you can take a look at the default security roles that are available.