🆕 View as someone else

📢 Info & Announcements
1

Field access, rules, and record layouts help you shape what each person sees, from fields and charts to images and other blocks. But as an admin, how do you check that everything looks right for each person?

Meet View as someone else.

See how field access and rules affect views, activities, and record layouts. Choose a person or group and preview how your setup changes for them.

View as someone else is included in Premium at no extra cost.

:books: How to get started

Customize record layout:

  1. Open your database app and click ••• in the top-right corner.
  2. Select Customize record layout.
  3. Click Viewing as at the top and choose a person or group.

In a database, dashboard, form, or record:

  1. Open •••
  2. Select View as from the ••• menu.
  3. Choose a person or group under Viewing as at the top.

Click Stop next to View as in the ••• menu to end the preview. Turn it on when you need it, off when you don’t.

:busts_in_silhouette: Choose who to preview

You can choose from:

  • People: Individual people, such as Matt or Will.
  • Groups: Teams you’ve created, such as Sales or Marketing.
  • General: Workspace admins, workspace members, guests, or public link.

For example, if you hide a database field from guests through Field Access, select Guests to see how this affects the field and its related activity entries.

:mag_right: Preview with real record values

In Customize record layout, you can choose both a record to preview and a person to view it as.

Select a record, such as a task, under Preview. Then choose someone from your team under Viewing as. The preview uses that record’s values to show how field access and rules apply to the selected person.

This is useful when your rules depend on field values. For example, if a section is shown only for completed tasks, switch between an open task and a completed task to check it.

Change the record or person to try different combinations without leaving Customize record layout.

:bulb: A few things to know

Preview before giving access.
See how field access and rules affect fields, activities, and layouts for someone, even if they don’t have access to the app or record yet. This lets you check your setup without changing their access. Selecting someone in Viewing as does not check or change which apps or records they can open.

Hidden fields appear faded while unlocked.
As an admin, you can still see fields and related activity entries that would be hidden for your selection. They appear faded in the unlocked preview, so you can keep track of them while adjusting your setup.


View as someone else has already made our own setup work easier. Check how things look for different people, right where you build. We hope it’s a little quality of life update for your admins too.

Happy building!

6 Likes
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Ooh I love this. Saw it pop up late last week and I’ve already used it in several situations. Very handy.
One thing I wished for but didn’t see at this time is viewing (or being able to create) private views for another user when viewing an app from their perspective. Is this something that might be coming soon along with this update?
That would be so handy for helping new users, or assigning a bucket of records to someone specific to work on.

1 Like
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Thanks so much for the feedback @CarsonRedCliffLabs,

Really happy to hear you’ve already found the feature useful!:100:

We’ve thought quite a bit about where to draw the line with “View as”. For now, it’s designed to help admins understand how field access and rules affect what another user can see. We intentionally don’t include private views, private templates, or private restricted records.

For us, there’s an important trust aspect here. If something is explicitly private, users should be able to rely on it staying private, even from admins.

For onboarding or assigning work, we currently see team views and team templates as the better approach.

What you’re describing would go a step further and essentially simulate Tape exactly as another user sees it, including their private setup. That would be a different feature, and it’s not something we’re actively planning right now.

However, private views are probably a less sensitive case than private restricted records, so there may be options in the future, especially if we see more demand for this.

Thanks again for bringing this up!
Leo

1 Like
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thanks @Leo that totally makes sense, and yes, I agree. If a user marks something as private, they should be able to trust that someone can’t encroach and imitate their user to see that information.

Idea: maybe there’s a future option that could be created under an admin’s private views to click and say “Save as private view for user A” or “Save as private view for user B.”
This way admins can add things to that list for other users to be helpful while still being blocked from seeing the other private filters that a user may have created for themselves.

In a team setting we’ve repeatedly seen team views becoming a very long list or getting out of hand quickly. It’s nice to keep those team views very selective and instruct users to have private views for the majority of their work, but sometimes setting it up for them would really simplify things.

2 Likes