Whether you can open Data Explorer, run a query, save it, or change a dashboard is not controlled by a single setting. Four separate layers each have to allow it:
- Your organization has to have Data Explorer turned on.
- Your role has to carry the Data Explorer permissions, and those are granted one environment at a time.
- Privileged access mode is what lets a query read decrypted personal information. It is a separate permission, and a separate session you start yourself.
- Who created the query or dashboard decides a few actions that no permission can grant.
If something you expect to be able to do is blocked, work down that list in order. The first three are settings someone at your organization can change. The fourth is not.
Whether your organization has Data Explorer
Data Explorer is enabled per organization. Look for Explorer under Data in the Dashboard navigation. If it is not there, Data Explorer is not enabled for your organization, and no role permission will make it appear.
Dashboards inside Data Explorer are being rolled out separately from the query editor, so you may have the editor for a while before the Dashboards section shows up.
What your role can do
There are two Data Explorer rows in the role editor, under Data Explorer in the Products section. Both are granted per environment.
| Permission | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Data explorer: View | Browse the tables and columns you can query, run a query, see and export its results, and open saved queries and dashboards. |
| Data explorer: Edit | Everything View allows, plus saving a new query, renaming or rewriting a saved one, and archiving one. |
The split that surprises people most often: View already lets you run queries. It is not a read-only pass over other people’s saved work. Someone with View but not Edit can write brand new SQL, run it, and export the results; what they cannot do is save it for anyone else. If running ad-hoc queries against your data is something you want to restrict, View is the permission to withhold.
A third permission, Privileged access, sits separately from the two Data Explorer rows. It lets you start, extend, and end a privileged access session, and on its own it grants nothing else.
For how roles and permissions work overall, see Roles and permissions overview.
These permissions are per environment
Data Explorer permissions are scoped to environments, so a role can have them in your sandbox and not in production, or the other way round. Data Explorer queries whichever environment you have selected in the Dashboard, so if a query fails for you in production but works in sandbox, check whether your role is enabled for production before assuming the query is wrong.
Privileged access mode
Most columns in your Persona data are encrypted, and a normal Data Explorer query cannot read them. Privileged access mode is a session that lets your queries read decrypted information, including personally identifiable information.
It is deliberately separate from the rest of Data Explorer. Having the permission does not put you in privileged access mode; you have to turn it on yourself, each time, and the sessions are time-boxed and audited.
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Go to Data > Explorer.
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Select Enable privileged access in the header.
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Read the confirmation, which tells you the session lets you query decrypted information, then select Enable.
There is a short pause while the session is being set up. Once it is active, the button is replaced by a countdown reading Time remaining, with Extend and End in its menu.
A few things worth knowing before you rely on it:
- Turning it on and off re-runs your work. Data Explorer reloads the list of tables and re-runs any open query or dashboard tile when a session starts or ends, because the columns available to you have just changed.
- Extend it before it runs out. An expired session cannot be extended, and there is a cap on how many times a single session can be extended, so a long piece of work may need a fresh session partway through.
- You get one session at a time. Starting a second while one is already running is refused.
- End it when you are done. Nothing breaks if you leave it running, but the point of a time-boxed session is that it is not open longer than the task needed.
Rules that permissions don’t change
Some of what you can and cannot do in Data Explorer is not a role setting at all, and an admin cannot grant their way around it.
- Saved queries are shared with your whole organization. Anyone with View sees every saved query, not just their own. Treat a saved query as a shared document, and do not put anything in a query name that you would not want a colleague to read.
- Only the person who created a dashboard can change it. Everyone in the organization can open a dashboard, but renaming it, editing its layout, or deleting it is limited to its creator, who is named on it. Anyone else gets a message saying only the creator can change it. If someone leaves or is unavailable, the dashboard has to be recreated rather than reassigned.
- Queries written by Persona’s own analysts are protected. If Persona built a query for you, you can run it and build on it, but you cannot rewrite its SQL or archive it.
- Data Explorer only reads. It runs read queries and nothing else. Anything that would create, change, or delete data is rejected before it reaches your data, whoever is asking.
When something is blocked
- No Explorer in the navigation means Data Explorer is not enabled for your organization.
- No Dashboards section, but the editor works means dashboards have not been rolled out to you yet.
- A permission error when you run or save means your role is missing View or Edit for the environment you have selected. Someone with permission to manage roles can check this.
- Empty results where you expected names, addresses, or ID numbers usually means you are not in privileged access mode, rather than that the data is missing.
For what the editor itself can do, see Data Explorer Overview.