Recently, in our Salesforce org, I created two public groups for two different departments. In this, I noticed one issue: both groups can view the reports for each other’s department.
To maintain the privacy and data security for both departments, we had to restrict access to the Salesforce reports that are specific to a department.
In this Salesforce tutorial, we will discuss how to restrict access to reports in Salesforce.
Restrict Report Access in Salesforce
In this example, we will restrict access to reports for the groups. For example, Group A will have access to Report folder A, and Group B will have access to Report folder B.
For that, we first need to create public groups by following the steps below.
Create Public Groups in Salesforce
On the setup page, go to the Quick Find box, search, and select Public Groups under the Users heading.
In the Public Groups setup page, click on the New button option to create a new Public Group.
On the next page, fill in the required information inside the page. First, specify the Label, Group Name, and the required Group Members.
To add members, we can add through Users, Roles, and existing Public Groups.
Here in this example, we are filling the label with the SBDC Reports.
Once we fill out all the details, click the Save button to create a new Public group in Salesforce Lightning.
Now, we can also follow the same steps to create another Public Group with a name-> CORP Group.
Create Report Folders With Restricted Access in Salesforce
Before we jump to the next phase, we should know how to create reports in Salesforce.
Once we have created the public groups in Salesforce, we can follow these steps to restrict report access in Salesforce.
First, from the Home Setup page, click on the App Launcher icon, search for Reports, and click on the Reports option to open it.
After this, from the left side menu, click on the All Folders option given under the Folders section. This will open the page where all the folders will be listed.
On the next page, click on the New Folder option given in the top-right corner of the page.
Once we click the New Folder button, it will open a window where we need to specify the Folder Label and Folder Unique Name. After this, click on the Save button to create a new folder.
In this example, we created a folder with the name “SBDC Reports Folder“.
After clicking on the Save button, it will create and open the same folder in Salesforce. Here, we need to click on the drop-down arrow (⬇️) given next to the New Folder option and then click on the Share option.
In this window, select the Share With option as “Public Groups” and then under Names search and select the required public group.
After selecting the Public Group, click the Share button. Once the group is added under the Who Can Access section, you can also select the type of accessibility for that group. For instance, this access can be either View, Edit, or Manage.
Lastly, click on the Done button.
With this, every report we save in this report folder can be accessed only by the public group.
Change Report Folder in Salesforce
In case you have existing reports that you want to restrict to specific users or a group, then we can move those reports to the folder we have created.
For this, click on the All Reports option given under the Reports section from the left-side menu.
From the All Reports page, select the required report and click on the drop-down icon (⬇️) given corresponding to a report name. Then click on the Edit option to open the report in the Report Builder tab.
On the Report Builder tab, again click on the drop-down icon (⬇️) given next to the Save button and click on the Properties option.
In this window, we need to click on the Select Folder button and then choose the New Folder that we just created. After selecting the folder, simply click on the Select Folder option.
In our example, this new folder is the SBDC Reports Folder, which we have selected from the Created By Me section.
So, with this, we have successfully restricted the access of a report to a particular public group in Salesforce Lightning.
Conclusion
In this Salesforce tutorial, we learned how to restrict report access in Salesforce by using public groups and report folders. We first created public groups for each department and then created separate report folders. After that, we shared each folder only with the related public group.
With this setup, only selected users or public groups will be able to access the reports that will be restricted for others. This way, we make sure that reports stay private and secure for each group.
You may also like to read:
- Run Reports on Salesforce
- Export Report to Excel in Salesforce
- View Scheduled Reports in Salesforce
- Grant Access Using Hierarchies in Salesforce
I am Bijay Kumar, the founder of SalesforceFAQs.com. Having over 10 years of experience working in salesforce technologies for clients across the world (Canada, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, etc.). I am a certified salesforce administrator and expert with experience in developing salesforce applications and projects. My goal is to make it easy for people to learn and use salesforce technologies by providing simple and easy-to-understand solutions. Check out the complete profile on About us.
