The Viewer role gives people in your organisation a read-only seat on the Xapien platform.
Viewers can open reports in the teamspaces they belong to and use Ask Xapien to interrogate them, but they can't run new reports, edit existing ones, or take actions that consume credits.
This article walks you through what Viewers can and can't do, how Organisation Admins assign the Viewer role, and what Viewers will see when they open a report.
ℹ️ Who is this for?
Anyone in your organisation can be assigned the Viewer role. Only Organisation Admins can change someone's role - if you'd like to be promoted from Viewer to User, please speak to an Organisation Admin in your team.
What Viewers can do
Viewers have full read access to the reports in their teamspaces. From any report, a Viewer can:
View reports in the teamspaces they belong to
Use Ask Xapien to interrogate report content and ask follow-up questions
Open shared report links in read-only mode
What Viewers can't do
To keep usage and confidentiality controls tight, Viewers don't have access to actions that create new content, change existing content, or affect other people's access. Viewers can't:
Run new reports or start onward research from a related entity
Edit reports - including updating risk pills on sections, profiles, or related entities
Share, download, move, or delete reports
Invite users to the organisation
In the report view, editing controls - risk pills, share, download, move, delete, and onward research - are hidden or disabled for Viewers.
If a Viewer needs to run reports, an Organisation Admin can promote them to a User at any time from the Users page. For more on the difference between roles, see Adding and Managing Users.
Assigning the Viewer role
Organisation Admins can assign a user to a viewer role in two places:
From the Users page in the side navigation, when changing an existing user's role.
When using the Invite people button
Role descriptions appear inline in both places to help you pick the right permission level.
Please note: if you are not an organisation admin, you will not be able to access the Users page
For step-by-step guidance on inviting users and changing roles, see Adding and Managing Users.
⚠️ Last-admin guard
You can't demote the only remaining Organisation Admin in your organisation to Viewer. If you need to change the last admin's role, promote someone else to Organisation Admin first.
The Viewer experience
When a Viewer opens a report in one of their teamspaces, the report itself looks the same as it does for any other user - risk icons, sources, key details, and the full body of the report are all visible.
What's different is the toolbar and the in-report controls:
Ask Xapien is available - Viewers can ask follow-up questions about the report content
Risk pills are read-only - Viewers can see risk levels but can't change them
Share, download, move, and delete are hidden
Run report on related entities is disabled - onward research can only be initiated by a User or Organisation Admin
Viewers can also open shared report links in the same read-only view.
Can Viewers move reports between teamspaces?
No. Moving reports between teamspaces can only be done by Organisation admins and members of the teamspace.
For more on how to move reports between teamspaces, see Using Teamspaces
If your organisation uses SSO
If your organisation uses Single Sign-On (SSO), new users who sign in for the first time are provisioned automatically as Viewers. This gives you a safe default: anyone in your directory can land in Xapien and read the reports shared with them, but they can't run reports or consume credits until an Organisation Admin promotes them to a User.
Organisation Admins can promote SSO-provisioned Viewers to Users from the Users page at any time.
For more on managing users in an SSO organisation: if you're on a Pro or Enterprise plan, please contact your Customer Success Manager. If you're on the Base plan, please contact customer support.