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CRM 2011 Report Security - View by Individual or by Organization

Post Author: Joe D365 | June 21st, 2011

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, reports can be set as Viewable by User or by Organization. To see the CRM 2011 Report Security settings, navigate to WorkplaceReports, select a report and click Edit on the Ribbon. The setting is usually on the Administration tab.

CRM 2011 Report Security settings

This setting can be a little bit difficult to understand because changing the report to "Viewable by Individual" may not automatically secure it to the user depending on the logged in user's security role. So, let's take some time to understand the differences between the two options.


Setting a report to be viewable by the Organization means that all users can see it, meaning the report is essentially "Organization Owned."  The exception to this is in some implementations, the out-of-the-box reports are owned by "System" which is not a user in CRM. These reports can only be seen by users whose Reports security is set to the Organization. If you change the security role so that the user cannot see all reports in the Organization, these reports disappear.  Assigning the report to a user in CRM makes that report potentially visible depending on the user's security role.


Setting a report to be Viewable by the Individual does not "hide" it from everyone, but rather makes it subject to each user's access privileges.  So if users have read access to reports in their business units, they will see all reports that are Viewable by Organization along with reports that are Viewable by Individual where the owner of the report is in their business unit.


To completely secure reports to an individual, you would need to change read privileges on all security roles to User only like in the example above, and in that case, a report either needs to be owned by the user or explicitly shared with the user in order for the user to see it.

Just a quick little tip today from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Experts at PowerObjects.

Happy CRM'ing


Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

4 comments on “CRM 2011 Report Security - View by Individual or by Organization”

  2. I'd like to have all information on CRM viewable by everyone in the organization, but have them run reports only on data relevant to their level/bu organization (eg. A sales person has visibility to accounts and opps of his sales manager but cannot create reports on it). Does this function allow that?

    1. Hi Hans - if a user has read access across the whole organization AND can create reports then they can create reports for all teh data. However, a user can do a report from an filter were we filter by business unit. What we often find helpfull is to have a couple starter reports were users can open modify and save it as thier own.

  3. Hi, I would like to have everyone view all organization information (accounts, opportunities, contacts, etc) but create reports on information ONLY from their respective business unit/security level. Does this function allow that?

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