Sharing with groups

Note

Sharing groups need GeoLens v1.27.0 or later.

A sharing group is a named set of people, such as “Planning” or “Field crew”. Share a dataset or a map with one or more groups and only the owner, admins and the groups’ members can open it. Administrators create the groups and fill them; see Sharing groups in the admin guide.

What Restricted means

A dataset or map shared with a group while it is Private becomes Restricted. These people can open a restricted item:

• its owner
• admins
• members of the groups it is shared with

Everyone else gets a 404, as if it didn’t exist. Internal and public items keep their wider audience. Their groups stay stored and apply if the item is narrowed to private later.

Every surface that checks dataset access admits group members: the catalog and search, OGC API, STAC, DCAT and tiles. Group names are different. Only the owner and admins see which groups an item is shared with, and the names never appear in Records, STAC or DCAT output.

Access follows membership at once. When an administrator adds someone to a group they can open its items on their next request, and when they are removed they can’t.

Who can share with which groups

Owners can pick only groups they belong to. Admins can pick any group. The group picker lists exactly those: the groups you belong to, or every group for an admin. An owner who later leaves a group keeps the items already shared with it.

Share a dataset

Open the dataset, go to the Access tab and use the groups section below the visibility setting. It is shown to the dataset’s owner and to admins.

1. Search for a group and pick it. Each pick becomes a removable chip.
2. Read the line above Save. It says what saving will do.
3. Select Save.

What saving does depends on the dataset’s visibility:

• A private dataset with at least one group becomes Restricted.
• A restricted dataset whose last group you remove becomes Private again.
• An internal or public dataset keeps its audience, and the groups stay stored.

Adding or removing a group can also be refused. See When a change is refused.

Share a map

In the map builder, open Share and choose Specific groups, between Only you and All team members. Pick groups and select Save groups. The dialog shows the group editor to the map’s owner and to admins.

• Choosing Only you on a restricted map removes its groups. The dialog and the confirmation toast say that the groups’ members lose access.
• Removing the last group in the editor switches the map back to Only you.
• On an internal or public map the group list stays editable. A note says the groups don’t change who can open the map now.

Becoming restricted stops the map’s share link and embed tokens, and retires signed tile URLs. The dialog warns about this before you save when the map has a link or token. Share links stay public-only, so the shared view, card and link preview of a restricted map answer 404.

A restricted map doesn’t widen its layers’ access. Each layer still follows its own dataset.

When a group can’t read some layers

If a member of a chosen group can’t read a layer’s dataset, nothing is saved yet. A confirmation lists each layer with its dataset and the groups that can’t read it:

• Share map and datasets also shares each listed dataset with the groups that lack it. This is offered for datasets you own, or any dataset if you are an admin, that are published and private or restricted. A dataset you can’t share stays hidden from the group either way.
• Share map only shares the map and leaves those layers hidden from the groups.
• Cancel sends nothing and keeps your picks as a draft.

If sharing one of the datasets is refused, the whole change is rolled back and the map keeps its previous groups.

After the map is shared, the dialog warns about layers that stay out of reach with Hidden from some of this map’s groups. In the layer stack the same layers carry the Hidden from this map’s viewers badge.

When a change is refused

GeoLens refuses a change that would quietly take access away from someone. The request answers 422 and nothing is written. The cases are:

• Narrowing, unsharing or unpublishing a dataset while an internal, public or restricted map of yours would lose that layer for its audience. The unpublish message reads Cannot unpublish: dataset is used in shared maps: <names>. Remove the layer from those maps or change their audience first.
• Sharing a dataset, or adding a member to a group, when a virtual raster dataset would then reach someone who can’t read one of its sources.

Making a map public, or adding a layer to a public map, is refused with a 400 when a layer’s dataset isn’t public and published. The Share dialog lists those datasets and asks for them to be made public and published first.

If a group is deleted

Its members lose the items that reached them only through that group. A dataset shared only with it stays restricted and is visible to its owner and admins. A restricted map left with no group becomes private.

See also

• Dataset detail: the Access tab and visibility levels
• Map builder: the Share dialog, share links and embeds
• Sharing groups API: the routes, the 409 confirmation flow and the client header