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When you add a Dashboard or other content brought in from connected integrations like Tableau, Curator will inherit the security settings from those integrations. However, you may want to override those source-systems or you may want to prevent users from seeing content that exists solely within Curator - for example, restricting access to a specific page. With Restrict Access you can override inherited security settings when necessary, offering you maximum flexibility over the visibility of content.

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Enabling Restrict Access

  1. On the backend of Curator, navigate to the Content > Reorder Navigation section from the left-hand menu.
  2. Find the menu link you’d like to restrict access to and click the pencil/edit icon - or click the “New Menu Link” button to create a new menu item.
  3. Toggle the Restrict Access to ON to display a list of groups
  4. Select the groups you’d like to grant access to
  5. Save the menu item
You can then confirm the restrict access is enabled on the Reorder Navigation page by hovering over the lock icon and seeing the phrase “Restricted Access based on Group Membership” Tableau admins automatically have access to all Tableau-connected content in Curator. Restrict access overrides these permissions, so admins will need to be in one of the selected groups to see the content within the menu.

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Restricting Pages and Files Directly

Pages and Files can also restrict access in their own settings, which secures the content itself rather than a single menu link to it. This is the better choice when the content is reachable in more than one way (several menu links, search, tiles, or a shared URL), or when you do not want to create a menu link at all. See Restricting a Page to Groups and the Files documentation. Content-level and menu-level restrictions stack: a user must satisfy both to see the content.

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Content Linked From Several Menu Items

The same Page or Dashboard can be linked from more than one menu item, for example from two dropdowns that are each restricted to a different group. A user can open the content when at least one of its links is open to them, and is blocked only when every one of those links is restricted for them. Main and footer menus that a Group Override shows only to other groups do not count against a user, because that user never sees them. If the content is linked only from menus the user is not shown, those links still apply, so a restricted link in another group’s menu keeps the content protected. Links in menus that no theme uses always count. Restrict Access is enforced on every page load, not just when rendering navigation menus. This means that if a user shares a Curator URL with someone who is not in an authorized group, that person will still be blocked from viewing the content. There is no additional configuration required to protect against unauthorized access via shared or bookmarked URLs — the same group-membership check applies regardless of how the page is reached.

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Restrict Access and Tableau Connection Issues

Inherited Tableau permissions can only be checked while Curator is able to reach Tableau Server. If the connection is down or misconfigured when a user requests a dashboard, Curator cannot verify that user’s Tableau permissions, so it hides the content instead of showing it. Menu items, tiles, and search results for that connection disappear, and opening one of its dashboards by URL shows a page saying the content is temporarily unavailable. Curator checks again at most every five minutes and restores the content as soon as the connection responds. Content on a disabled connection stays hidden until the connection is enabled again. See Content Hidden While a Connection Is Down. Some settings still show content while an enabled connection is down: pass-through authentication, content whose URL is listed in the Authentication Settings Whitelist, and the Skip checking all Dashboard permissions and Skip checking menu item’s Dashboard permissions settings. Restrict Access is a separate check that reads only from Curator’s own database, so it is unaffected by Tableau connectivity. Enable Restrict Access on any menu item that relies on one of those settings and whose content must stay limited to certain groups during a Tableau outage. To apply this protection everywhere at once, enable Settings > Security > Authentication Settings > Access rules > Restrict Access is Always Enabled, which treats every menu item as restricted and requires each one to list the groups allowed to see it. See Frontend User Permissions for details on that setting.
The global Restrict Access is Always Enabled setting only evaluates content that is linked from at least one menu item. A dashboard with no menu link has nothing to restrict, so it skips this check and its access still depends solely on the Tableau connection. Add a menu link for any content that must remain protected during an outage.