User roles & responsibilities
Who can do what inside Ferflow, which package includes each role, and who in your organization each role is meant for.
The four roles
| Role | Meant for | Package |
|---|---|---|
| Admin | IT or the BI owner who runs the install | Every package |
| Manager | Team leads who publish their team's dashboards and keep its datamarts and Aiz's knowledge current | Business & Corporate |
| User | Analysts and anyone who builds dashboards | Every package |
| Viewer | People who only read dashboards: leadership, other departments, auditors | Every package |
A role decides what someone can do across Ferflow. What they can do with one particular dashboard is set separately, by sharing. Ferflow comes in three packages — Standard, Business and Corporate — and the Package column shows which one each role and feature needs.
What each role can do
| Admin | Manager | User | Viewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open the admin panel: users, sign-in settings, data sources, license, logs | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Connect a data source and manage its credentials | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Import a datamart from a file, or build one from a data source | ✓any source | ✓files, and sources an Admin grants | — | — |
| Edit, delete and refresh a datamart, read its logs, and set who may read it | ✓any | ✓their own | — | — |
| Browse a datamart's data | ✓any | ✓any they may read | — | — |
| Create dashboards and edit their own | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Open dashboards shared with them, published dashboards and templates | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Publish a dashboard to anyone with the link | ✓any | ✓own, or shared with Edit or Manage | — | — |
| Unpublish a dashboard | ✓any | ✓own | ✓own | — |
| Save a dashboard as a template for everyone | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Ask the AI assistant about your data | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Manage what the AI assistant knows Business & Corporate | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| Re-run Aiz's insight scan on demand Corporate | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
Admins have full access to every dashboard. Everyone else works with their own dashboards and the ones shared with them.
Dashboard access: View, Edit, Manage
A role is organization-wide; access is per dashboard. They work together: the role sets the ceiling of what someone can do anywhere, and the access level sets what they can do with one particular dashboard. Sharing is on every package — whoever owns a dashboard, or has Manage access to it, can share it with named people at one of three levels:
| Access | Lets them |
|---|---|
| View | Open the dashboard and use its filters. Nothing is changed or saved. |
| Edit | Everything View allows, plus change the dashboard and save it — add and arrange components, edit its queries, rename it. |
| Manage | Everything Edit allows, plus share it with others (and set their access), delete it, and set up email schedules for it (Business & Corporate). |
- The owner and Admins always have full access to a dashboard. Only the owner sees the list of who it is shared with.
- Publishing needs both. To publish a dashboard to anyone with the link you need the Admin or Manager role and at least Edit access (or to own it). A User with Edit access can change a dashboard but not publish it — that's the review step a Manager provides.
- Access never lifts a role's ceiling: giving a Viewer Edit access lets them change that one dashboard, but they still can't create their own or publish.
- Give the lowest level that does the job. A Viewer normally needs View, nothing more.
Responsibilities
Admin: keeps the install running and safe.
- Install, upgrade and back up Ferflow, and restrict who can reach its port on your network.
- Activate, renew and move the license.
- Connect data sources and keep their credentials current, and choose which Managers may build datamarts from each source (every source is open to all Managers until you restrict it).
- Build and refresh datamarts, and set who may read each one.
- Set up sign-in (local accounts, LDAP, Azure AD on Business and Corporate), assign roles, and deactivate people who leave.
- Curate the shared templates.
- Keep at least two Admins, so one person being away never locks you out.
Manager (Business & Corporate): the approval step between building and publishing, and the person who keeps a team's data current without going through an Admin.
- Review dashboards their team shares with them, and publish the ones that are ready.
- Unpublish anything that goes out of date. They can do that for their own dashboards; ask an Admin for someone else's.
- Build and refresh their own datamarts from the data sources an Admin grants them — from a file or a database, with the query builder or their own SQL — and choose who may read each one. They manage the datamarts they created; an Admin handles the rest.
- Keep what the AI assistant knows accurate for their area (Corporate).
User: builds and maintains dashboards.
- Build dashboards and queries on the datamarts Admins provide.
- Share with colleagues at the lowest access they need.
- Share a finished dashboard with a Manager (Edit access) for publishing, or with an Admin on Standard.
- Own the email schedules they set up (Business & Corporate).
Viewer: uses the dashboards.
- Read the dashboards shared with them or published.
- Tell the dashboard's owner when a number looks wrong.
How people get a role
- Someone who signs in for the first time through LDAP, Azure AD or Google starts as a User.
- Admins change roles, and create local accounts with any role, in Admin → User Management.
- On Community and Standard, the role list shows Manager · Business and it can't be chosen. Anyone who already had the Manager role, for example from the free trial, keeps it.
Roles and your user limit
Every active account takes a seat, whatever its role: Admins, Managers, Users and Viewers alike. Standard allows 15, Business 50, and Corporate has no limit; the free trial allows 5 and the free Community license 3. Deactivating someone frees their seat straight away and keeps their dashboards.
Two common setups
A single team on Standard. One or two Admins, analysts as Users, leadership as Viewers. Admins publish the dashboards that go out by link.
Several departments on Business. A Manager for each department. Admins connect the data sources and grant each Manager the ones their team needs; each Manager builds their department's datamarts from those. Users build dashboards on them and share a finished one with their Manager at Edit level; the Manager reviews it and publishes it. Leadership and other departments are Viewers, and Admins stay focused on the sources, access and the install.
Questions about which setup fits your organization: contact us, or compare packages on the pricing page.