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User Roles & Permissions

Understand how to assign, customize, and manage user roles and permissions in Polar Analytics, including new controls to restrict data exploration and AI access for enhanced security.

Written by Abby Garland

Overview

Managing user access in Polar helps keep your workspace secure while giving each team member the right level of control. You can assign one of Polar’s default roles or create custom roles for more granular permissions.

This article covers:

  • Default user roles and permissions

  • How to create and manage custom roles

  • How to assign, modify, and revoke user access

Section 1: Default Roles

Polar offers four default user roles:

Role

View Content

Edit Reports

Manage Users

Add Connectors

Edit Data Settings

Apply Filters

Admin

✅ Yes

✅ Yes

✅ Yes

✅ Yes

✅ Yes

✅ Yes

Analyst

✅ Yes

✅ Yes

❌ No

❌ No

❌ No

✅ Yes

Viewer

✅ Yes

❌ No

❌ No

❌ No

❌ No

✅ Yes

Connector

❌ No

❌ No

❌ No

✅ Yes

❌ No

❌ No

Permission definitions

  • View Content: Access to view all workspace content.

  • Edit Reports: Ability to create and modify Custom Reports.

  • Manage Users: Ability to add users, remove users, and modify user roles.

  • Add Connectors: Ability to connect integrations.

  • Edit Data Settings: Ability to update Account Data Settings.

  • Apply Filters: Ability to apply date ranges, breakdowns, and other available filters.

Use default roles when a team member’s access needs match one of these predefined permission sets.

Section 2: Custom Roles

Custom roles allow Admins to create tailored permissions for teams that need more granular access control. This is useful for larger teams or organizations with complex reporting structures.

How to create a custom role

  1. Go to Workspace Settings.

  2. Select the Roles Tab.

  3. Click Create User Role.

  4. Add a role name and description.

  5. Set Content Creation Privileges by choosing whether users can create folders, dashboards, and reports.

  6. Define which Dashboards, Folders, or Reports the role can access and modify.

  7. Choose the access type:

    • All rights: Users can view and edit content.

    • View only: Users can view content and apply filters, including date ranges, views, and other available filters.

  8. Assign the role to the relevant users.

Users assigned to a Custom Role can still create or edit Views, Custom Dimensions, and Custom Metrics. They cannot edit account-wide settings such as General, Data, or User settings.

Section 3: Managing Custom Roles

As your team changes, you may need to update or remove custom roles.

New: Restricting Data Access for Custom Roles and Viewers

Custom roles now follow a secure-by-default model, ensuring users only access what’s explicitly allowed.

Previously, custom roles inherited broad permissions by default, meaning users could bypass restrictions through features like:

  • Metric Explore

  • Drill-downs (e.g. cell-level data)

  • Ask Polar

  • Creating custom metrics, dimensions, and more

This has now been fixed.

What’s changed

  • Custom roles now start with limited access (list/view only).

  • Admins must explicitly grant deeper data access using two new toggles:

    • Allow users to explore data in depth

    • Allow users to use Ask Polar

  • The Viewer role has been further restricted and no longer includes data exploration capabilities.

What users can no longer do by default

Unless explicitly enabled, users in Custom Roles (and all Viewers) will not have access to:

  • Drill-down popups and tracked-order views

  • The Explore metric functionality

  • Ask Polar and AI Instructions

  • Ad-hoc metric exploration pages

  • Creating or editing:

    • Custom Metrics

    • Custom Dimensions

    • Annotations

    • Targets

    • Schedules

    • Alerts

How to manage data access permissions

  1. Go to Workspace Settings.

  2. Navigate to the Roles tab.

  3. Select the custom role you want to update.

  4. Click Edit Role.

  5. Locate the new permission toggles:

    • Enable Allow users to explore data in depth to grant access to drill-downs, explore, and advanced data views.

    • Enable Allow users to use Ask Polar to allow AI-powered querying.

  6. Save your changes.

Important notes

  • These changes apply to all existing custom roles and Viewer users.

  • Admins, Operators, Connector roles, and Demo users are not affected.

  • This update may slightly impact existing workflows if users previously relied on unrestricted data access.

If users experience friction, consider enabling the new toggles or adjusting role configurations to match their needs.

This update aligns permissions with their intended purpose: ensuring users only access the data and tools relevant to their role, while maintaining workspace security and clarity.

Section 4: Assigning and Managing User Access

Once you know which role a user needs, you can assign or update their access from the Users tab.

How to assign a role

  1. Go to Workspace Settings.

  2. Select the Users Tab:.

  3. Add or edit a user:

    • To add a new user, click Invite User and select their role.

    • To update an existing user, click the dropdown next to their name and choose the appropriate role.

  4. Save your changes.

Managing access over time

  • Revoke access when a team member no longer needs workspace access.

  • Modify roles as needed as your team grows or responsibilities change.

  • Review permissions periodically to make sure each user has the right level of access.

Conclusion

User roles help you control who can view content, edit reports, manage users, add connectors, edit data settings, and apply filters in Polar. Start with a default role when possible, and use custom roles when your team needs more specific access rules.

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