About users and roles

As a user on a TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire® team, you can have one of three roles; Analyst, Business Author, or Consumer. Your role determines what you can do in Spotfire.

Essentially, your role decides whether you can author and edit analyses, what type of Spotfire client you can use (installed or web), and what functionality you have access to.

To invite users and assign roles, you must be the owner of the TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire® account. See Managing your team.

Note: After an account owner signs up for a TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire® account, the account owner must invite members to their team and assign roles from the pool of available seats.

Roles in TIBCO Cloud Spotfire


Capability	Consumer	Business Author	Analyst
View analyses	Yes	Yes	Yes
Use Spotfire in a web browser	Yes	Yes	Yes
Author and edit analyses		Yes	Yes
Use the Spotfire installed client			Yes

Consumer

In the Consumer role, you can use Spotfire in your web browser. You can view and, to some extent, interact with analyses that an Analyst or Business Author user has authored. You cannot author and edit analyses.

Business Author

In the Business Author role, you can use Spotfire in your web browser to author and edit analyses. You can use most of the authoring capabilities that are available in the Spotfire web client.

Tip: To enter editing mode when you have opened an analysis, click the Viewing drop-down menu and select Editing.

Analyst

In the Analyst role, you can download and use the Spotfire Analyst installed client for Windows. In the installed client, you have access to the full authoring capabilities of TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire®.

Of course, as an Analyst you can also use Spotfire in your web browser.

Tip: To enter editing mode when you have opened an analysis, click the Viewing drop-down menu and select Editing.

What's the difference between the installed client and the web client?

Depending on your role, you might be able to use Spotfire either in your web browser only, or you can also run Spotfire as an installed application on your Windows computer. The names of the clients in some cases correspond to the user roles; the web client is sometimes referred to as Spotfire Business Author & Consumer, and the installed client is called Spotfire Analyst, but an Analyst user can also use the web client for certain authoring.

There are some differences in functionality between the two clients.

Web client

Your role determines what you can do in the web client. Consumers cannot author and edit analyses, whereas Business Authors and Analysts can do that, but not with as much functionality as in the installed client.

View, author, and edit analyses in your web browser.
Access data from Salesforce and Google Analytics.
Work with analyses with connections to supported data sources that have been prepared in the Spotfire Analyst installed client. See Supported data sources in the TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire® web client.

Tip: To open Spotfire in your web browser, log in to your selected TIBCO Cloud™ region:

US, Oregon: https://spotfire-next.cloud.tibco.com/
Europe, Ireland: https://eu.spotfire-next.cloud.tibco.com/

Installed client for Windows

You must have the Analyst role to use the installed client.

View, author, and edit analyses.
Create data connections to access data from a wide range of data sources.
Use advanced analytical capabilities, like adding transformations, predictive modeling, lines and curves, and powerful data functions in the analyses.
Use the full range of Spotfire visualizations, including box plots, 3D scatter plots, text areas, heat maps, and graphical tables.

Tip: To download the installed client for Windows, see Downloading TIBCO Cloud™ Spotfire® Analyst.