User Profile Visibility

Overview

User profile visibility is a concept in Appian that allows a user to view and interact with another user in Appian.

If a user is visible to another user, their profile and contact information is displayed throughout the environment.

A user can be set as not visible to other users so that:

• The user's contact information does not display on user interfaces.
• The user does not show up in searches and generic user lists
• Other users can not take action on the user.

The specific impact on the interfaces, search, and user interaction are detailed in the sections below.

Configure user profile visibility

Two factors determine whether a user is visible within an interface, search, and user interactions:

• The default visibility of all users within the system.
• The user's role map, which determines the specific visibility of a user to a set of other users.

Regardless of the default visibility setting and user role map settings, system administrators can always see all users. Additionally, you can configure individual sites to prevent users from accessing their own profile through the site's user menu.

Set the default visibility

The default visibility of users in the system is managed on the Permissions page of the Admin Console. Under the User Profile section, you can choose to enable or disable the option Users can see the profile details of all users by default.

If this option is selected (the default):

• Users can see the profile details of another user.
• Notification emails sent by Appian will include users' display names.

If this option is unselected:

• Users cannot see another user's details unless they are explicitly added in to their role map.
• Notification emails sent by Appian will only include users' usernames, not their display names.
• In the user image component, if the user doesn't have a profile image, the first letter of their username will display instead of their initials.

Modify a user's role map

In addition to the system-wide default for user profile visibility, you can also set the user's visibility at the user-level through their role map.

A user's role map is configured using the Modify User Security Smart Service. Only users or groups entered in the Administrator, Editor, and Viewer inputs of the smart service can see the target user in the application.

Each time you execute the Modify User Security Smart Service, you write a new role map for the user. As such, ensure you enter every user or group you want as part of the role map each time you implement it.

Control profile access in sites

You can prevent users from accessing their own profile from each site's user menu by turning off the Enable profile link in user menu setting in the site object.

When you disable profile access:

• Users can still access their own profile through user record links that link to their own user record.
• Users can still access their profile from other Appian workspaces, such as Tempo, Appian Designer, or Process HQ.
• You must configure this setting separately for each site where you want to hide profile access. To completely prevent end users from accessing their profile from the user menu, configure this setting in all sites that end users have access to.

Updating the User record type to use optimized data access

After you upgrade an Appian environment to version 22.4 or higher, you can update the User record type to use optimized data access. When you update the User record type, any existing user profile visibility settings will be ignored in the following locations and should be replaced with record-level security:

• The User record type.
• The Users record list.
• The record views on the User record type.
• Records-powered grids that use the User record type as the source.

Objects impacted by user profile visibility

User profile visibility settings will automatically apply to certain user interfaces, search, and user interactions.

If a user is not visible to other users, then:

• Anywhere a user's display name would appear is replaced with their username.

  Tip:  Keep this in mind when creating usernames for new user accounts. If you plan on creating an application that restricts the visibility of users, make sure to create usernames that are not personally identifiable.

  If you have already created a username, you can use the updateUsername() and commitUpdateUsername() APIs as part of the Rename Users Plug-in to modify an existing username.

• Only the username and profile image displays on user cards. User cards appear when you hover your mouse over a username within Tempo and Sites.
• The user will not appear in the Users view in Appian Designer or the membership list of a group.
• The user does not show up in any search results, including the People Picker.
• All interactions are restricted, including sending a message, creating a social task, and giving kudos on Tempo.
• If the user edited an application listed in the Recent Applications section of the Applications view, only their username will display in the list of recent editors.

Feedback