What is the intended use of Reference Types in Access Filter configuration?

Hi Gabriel,

1) Reference Type is just a way to get a user-friendly label to map to the actual column that access filter is for.

2) Yes, if you have 2 different Access Filters (using 2 different ref types), then you can use the 1st one in view 1 on column A, and then use the 2nd one in view 2 also on column A

3) It is not possible to have 2 different Access Filters apply to the same field within the same view. However, as described in the previous answer, it is possible in 2 different views.

4) It doesn't really make sense to me because the 2 different source filters will both be using the same source filter rules. I can't think of a situation where this sort of setup would be useful - however, I suppose it could be useful in some situations, but I just can't think of any at the moment.

5) If 2 access filters are using the same ref type, then this means they are both using the same set of access filter rules. So in fact you actually could have 2 different rules for the same user but they would end up being combined.

For example,

1. User_A is allowed to see records whose Region is Australia,

2. User_A is allowed to see records whose Region is Europe.

But don't forget that in the end, the access filters are just regular conditions in the WHERE clause, so a report running off either of the 2 access filters would end with:

WHERE Region IN ('Australia', 'Europe')

I hope this makes sense to you. I actually started to get a bit confused by the different combinations of things in your questions, so I hope you don't get confused by them. I wonder in the end if it might be easier to get a grasp of things by just playing around with access filters in your development environment.

regards,

David

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your answers they helped me clarify a pair of things. On the other end, I have one extra question that arise from your answers:

• I can see that a Access Filter has one and only one Reference Type associated, so that a Ref Type can have multiple Access Filters. As you mentioned it does not make much sense to have two access filters for the same data source with the same reference type, as both of them would use the same rules. From this I infer that Ref Types make sense when you have access filters for different data sources, while this seems fair I don't seem to grasp the use case where Ref Types are the solution to a problem I might face. Something like the use case when you can say: if Reference Types did not exist I won't be able to achieve this or that on YF?. Excuse me if the question seems a little bit too detailed, but I have not used Access Filters before and have found Ref Types difficult to understand.

Thanks for your suggestions, right now I'm configuring access filters for a customer and have found them pretty useful.

Bye,

Gabriel

Hi Gabriel,

Actually, I think I've just found out what is perhaps confusing things. When you want to add an Access Filter to a column in the view builder, the option called "Access Filter" has a description that says "Select an access filter to apply to this field", and yet is shows a list of Reference Types rather than a list of Access Filters!

I just discovered this because in answering your questions I decided to give more specifically descriptive names than I normally do: Normally for a database column called Region I would create a Ref Type called Region and an Access Filter called Region, but this time I created "Ref Type Region" and "Access Filter Region" and that's when I noticed the Ref Type below:

So I'm not sure what has happened here, I will have to investigate this further. However, do not let this bother you because you can still exactly what you want if you follow the following steps:

1) Create 2 different Access Filters each with their own different Reference Type, and create the 2 different sets of rules for user1

2) In view1 use the 1st Access Filter for your desired column, and in view2 use the 2nd Access Filter for the same column

3) Create tab1 from view1, and tab2 from view2, and then user1 will be allowed to view different sets of rows in each dash tab.

Please give that a try and let me know how it goes.

regards,

David

Hi Gabriel,

I'm just checking up on how you got on with this and whether you'd like the ticket closed or not?

regards,

David