Personalized information links
Using personalized information links you can set up a data source to return only information applicable for a certain user or group. Depending on which user is logged in and accesses the information link, different subsets of the data will be available.
For example, you could set up an information link that detects whether the user retrieving data is a member of the sales force for Europe, Asia or the US and only return data for that continent.
The following three examples demonstrate personalized information links. The first retrieves data depending on which user is logged in; the second retrieves data depending on which groups that user is a member of. The third option ensures that users with the same name, but from different domains, do not automatically have access to the same data.
Syntax
The syntax for the personalized information link parameters is as follows.
%CURRENT_USER%and
%CURRENT_GROUPS%%CURRENT_USER_DOMAIN%User name via lookup table
Scenario: You want to set up an information link to a data table showing sales made by all the sales people in the company. However, depending on which person from the sales department accesses an analysis using this information link, only the sales figures pertaining to that single user should be retrieved.
First, take a look at the Sales table containing the total sales for every person in the sales force.
| Order ID | Employee ID | Product | Sale ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 101 | Cornflakes | 100 |
| 2 | 150 | Soda | 550 |
| 3 | 244 | Cornflakes | 160 |
| 4 | 101 | Mineral water | 400 |
| 5 | 101 | Soda | 120 |
| 6 | 339 | Mineral water | 200 |
Next, create a "lookup table" on the data source that matches the
Employee ID to the
Spotfire username for each person logging into the
Spotfire Server.
| Spotfire Username | Employee ID |
|---|---|
| mikesmith | 101 |
| lauraclarke | 150 |
| sarahdonovan | 244 |
| malcolmreynolds | 339 |
Next, create a
Filter or
Column element that constrains the
Spotfire Username column to only return values for the
currently logged-in user. (In the example below, a new, restricted column
element is created by adding the personalized condition as a hard filter on the
column element. This is the column element that is used in the information
link.)
"LookupTable"."Spotfire Username" = 'malcolmreynolds'Finally, you create a Join between the "Sales" table and the Lookup table—joining the Employee ID columns.
Add the restricted column element (or the filter element) to an information link, together with any other columns of interest and save it. The information link is now ready to be used and will only retrieve data for the currently logged in user.
Group membership
Scenario: You want to set up an information link to a data table showing sales made by all the sales people in the company. However, depending on which person from the sales department accesses an analysis using this information link, only the sales figures pertaining to the region that sales person is assigned to should be retrieved. For example, if a sales person is working in the East region, she should only be allowed to see sales figures made in that region (by any person).
The Spotfire Administrator has created groups on the Spotfire Server named "SalesForce-East", "SalesForce-West", "SalesForce-South", and "SalesForce-North". Each sales person is a member of one or more of these.
You then take a look at the "Sales" table containing the total sales of every person in the sales force.
| Order ID | Employee ID | Region | Product | Sale ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 101 | SalesForce-East | Cornflakes | 100 |
| 2 | 150 | SalesForce-West | Soda | 550 |
| 3 | 244 | SalesForce-North | Cornflakes | 160 |
| 4 | 101 | SalesForce-East | Mineral water | 400 |
| 5 | 101 | SalesForce-East | Soda | 120 |
| 6 | 339 | SalesForce-East | Mineral water | 200 |
Next, add a
Filter or
Column element that constrains the
Region column so that it only returns values if the
currently logged in user is a member of a group with that exact name. (In the
example below, a new, restricted column element is created by adding the
personalized condition as a hard filter on the column element. This is the
column element that will be used in the information link.)
"SalesTable"."Region" = ('SalesForce-East','SalesForce-North')Add the restricted column element (or the filter element) to an information link, together with any other columns of interest and save it. The information link is now ready to be used and will only retrieve data for groups that the currently logged in user is a member of.
Current user domain
Scenario: You are administrating data access for a large company, with many employees in several departments. Some of the users have the same name but should have access to different data depending on which department they are working in.
%1=(%CURRENT_USER%) AND %1=(%CURRENT_USER_DOMAIN%)For more information, see Defining a column filter in Information Designer and Creating a filter element.