Share a dashboard

This article provides recommendations for publishing and sharing dashboards and outlines the steps to share a published dashboard.

Who can access your dashboard?

You can share dashboards with users and groups in your Databricks account or workspace. Users registered to your workspace can be assigned varying levels of permissions that define their interaction capabilities with your dashboards.

Users who are not members of the workspace are limited to view-only access to your dashboard. They can view and run the dashboard, but they cannot edit it or the underlying datasets that support it. This access level aligns with view-only roles in other data visualization systems, with the added benefit of not requiring a special license.

Workspace member access

You can grant workspace users permission to view, edit, or manage your dashboard. See AI/BI dashboard ACLs. Workspace users with access to your dashboard can access both the draft or published versions. Workspace users must have at least CAN EDIT permission in order to modify and republish a draft.

Dashboards inherit the permissions set on the enclosing folder. By default, dashboards are stored in the /Workspace/Users/<username> directory. Anyone who has access to the enclosing folder can also access your dashboard. Only workspace admins can change ownership of a dashboard. See Dashboard administration guide.

Account member access

Members of your Databricks account who do not have access to the workspace can be granted access to a view-only copy of a dashboard published with embedded credentials. They use the publisher’s embedded credential to access the data displayed in the dashboard and the compute resources that run the underlying queries. That means account-level viewers do not require compute or data permissions. Members who do not have access to the workspace cannot access the draft version of the dashboard and will not see the Databricks workspace navigational elements at left or top.

For members of your account to access shared dashboards, an administrator must first register them with your Databricks account. See Dashboard administration guide. This step restricts access to the shared dashboard to only designated members of the account, rather than allowing anyone with the link to view it.

Data and compute for shared dashboards

To effectively share insights on a dashboard, viewers must be able to access the underlying data and the compute resources necessary to run the supporting queries that keep the dashboard updated. They can be provided access to those resources in one of the following ways:

Embed credentials (default): When you publish a dashboard, you can optionally embed your credentials. Embedding your credentials allows viewers to leverage your data and compute access so that they have the same view of the dashboard as you. It also allows all viewers to use the same shared cache for maximum efficiency.

Don’t embed credentials: When credentials are not embedded, each dashboard viewer’s own data and compute credentials are applied. A workspace admin can manage access to data and compute resources. Users who do not have access to the dashboard’s originating workspace can’t be granted access to compute resources. Effectively, this limits dashboard access to only those users with workspace access.

If you opt not to embed your credentials, you must verify that viewers have the necessary data and compute access to view the data displayed on the dashboard. Choose Embed credentials if you want to share with users who don’t have access to the workspace.

For draft dashboards, the viewer’s data permissions are always applied, even if the dashboard is published with embedded credentials.

Share a published dashboard

Published dashboards can be shared with the following:

• Specific users and groups in your workspace

• Specific users and groups in your Databricks account

• All users in your Databricks account

If you want to share with everyone in your Databricks account, use the sharing setting: Anyone in my account can view. If you want to share with everyone in your workspace, use the system group: All workspace users.

Use the following steps to share your dashboard:

1. Open a draft or published dashboard.

2. Click the Share button, and use the Sharing dialog to set permissions for users and groups in your account.

   • At the top of the dialog, enter users and groups that you want to share with. You can assign specific permission levels, such as CAN EDIT and CAN MANAGE. Then, click Add.

   • To quickly assign view access for anyone in your Databricks account, use the Sharing settings option at the bottom of the Sharing dialog.

   

   Users need access to the workspace to manage or edit a dashboard. Workspace admins can add users to the workspace. See Assign a user to a workspace using the account console.

   Note

   Users who do not have access to the workspace are limited to CAN RUN permissions. If you grant elevated permissions, such as CAN EDIT, to a user who does not have workspace access, those permissions appear in the Sharing dialog but their actual permissions are limited to CAN RUN. Elevated permissions cannot be applied unless the user is added to the workspace. If the user is assigned a higher permission level and is later added to the workspace, they can interact with dashboards according to the assigned permission. See AI/BI dashboard ACLs for more information on dashboard permission levels.

3. Share the link with users.

   • Click Copy link near the bottom of the Sharing dialog to copy a shareable URL for the published dashboard.

   • Optionally, you can embed your dashboard in a different website or application.