Solution:
Groups are the best way to provision users with access to datasets. There is no right or wrong answer when it comes creating groups, but one guiding principle should be simplicity. Simplicity in creating groups, maintaining the users in the group and the datasets that they have access to.
And the easiest way to keep this simple is to reflect the existing structure within your organization. As much as you can, if you can replicate the department structure in your organization, the easier it is to manage change and regular maintenance of groups.
Example:
If you have people in the BI or analytics teams creating and uploading datasets into Auto Insights and sales and finance teams viewing the insights, you can create a 3 groups: 'BI/Analytics', 'Sales', 'Finance'. From there you can add in the necessary stakeholders and provision the proper dataset access that either Sales or Finance teams should have. Additionally you may have some Viewers who require access to all datasets, like Exec/Leadership teams. You can create an 'Executive' group and give them the proper access to all or most datasets.
*One thing to keep in mind with groups is that within groups there is no hierarchy. What that means is if a user belongs in multiple groups, one of those groups does not supersede permissions to which datasets that the user has access to. Instead, they will have access to all the datasets in each of their groups. (If ONE of those groups can access a dataset, that user will be able to access that dataset – even if the other groups do not have access).
David Kim
Customer Success Manager
Alteryx