Enhancing Google Analytics Access Controls

Today we’re excited to announce that enhanced user-access control lists are coming to Google Analytics. Google Analytics users have long been requesting more fine-grained control over access to various parts of their accounts. We listened, and we're delivering that control over the coming weeks.

Recap of the current access control system

Previously, user access was controlled with a role-based system. A user could be either a full account administrator, or a simple report viewer on your profiles.

How the new system will work

First, we’re expanding where permissions can be applied.  We’ll allow permissions to be set not only at the Google Analytics account and profile levels, but also at the property level (learn more about these entities). Second, we’re enhancing the permissions any user can have. Instead of offering only two roles, (administrator & report viewer) we’re now allowing every user to have any combination of view, edit, and manage-users access. You can customize permissions for each user at the account, property, and profile level, providing a greater variety of access than was available with the previous role-based system.

For example, one user can have full access to an entire account, another user can have edit and view access to a single property, and a third user could have view only access to a set of profiles.

Properties inherit permissions set on their parent account, and profiles inherit permissions set on their parent properties. For example, a user with view access to an account, also has view access to all of that account's properties and profiles.

Migration

We will automatically migrate all accounts over the coming weeks. When your account is migrated, you will notice a new, richer user-management interface that looks like the following:

Click for large-sized preview

The migration will convert account admins to users with full (manage users, edit, and view) access to that entire account; report-viewing users in the current role-based system will remain as users with view access to relevant profiles.

Conclusion

By making these changes Google Analytics users will be able to better meet their access-control needs and have an even better analytics and reporting experience. Enjoy the new controls!

Posted by Tim Thelin & Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team