Overview
This document describes how section privacy works in Responsive. It walks you through on how to enable section privacy, how you can mark a section as private, and other areas of impact.
Use Case: While responding to an RFP where multiple team’s collaboration is required, if there is any confidential data such as pricing that has to be restricted from the rest of the team, you can mark such sections as private. So only users who are a part of that section will be able to view or edit that section and for others it would appear disabled.
Prerequisite: Only the following users can access private sections:
- Super Admin
- Section authors and reviewers
- Project primary Contact
- User who had marked the section as private
Marking a section as private
- Click the section’s three-dot menu and select Mark as Private. A confirmation pop-up appears.
- Click Proceed. The section will be marked as private and a success message appears.
Note:
- A lock icon would appear adjacent to the private section’s name to differentiate between private and public sections.
- The private section accessible to you would also be displayed with a lock icon, however, you can access it based on your user permissions.
- The private sections to which you do not have access to, would appear locked and disabled. A tooltip Restricted Private Section would also appear.
- To make a private section public, click the three-dot menu and select Mark as Public. A confirmation pop-up appears, click Proceed to make the section public.
- In the All Sections view, when you navigate from one section to another, for restricted private sections, a message as shown below appears:
- In the Individual Section View, the restricted private section would be skipped as such. For example, there are five sections, section 2 and 3 are restricted private sections, then after section 1, you will be directly taken to section 4 and then 5.
- When you do not have access to a section, the right pane access would be denied as well.
- For sections to which you have access, under section properties, you can view who made the section private.
- When a section owner is replaced in the Organization Settings, if that user has marked any section as private, the new section owner name would appear for Marked as Private By. However, if the replaced user doesn’t have Update Section Permission, the Project Primary Contact will be updated under Marked as Private By, if the Project Primary Contact has the “Update Section” permission. However, if the Project Primary Contact doesn’t have this permission, the field Marked as Private By would be left blank.
- For AI Draft and auto-response, restricted private sections will be listed but marked as disabled and will not be considered for AI responding. Other private sections to which you have access to will be available for selection.
Private Documents
- Any document added to a private section will be a private document. The name will be hidden, lock icon would be displayed and the whole row will appear disabled.
- However, when a user attempts to upload a private document to a public section, an alert will be displayed seeking confirmation on adding the private document as public. On confirming, the private document will no longer remain private and would get converted to public.
- While bulk uploading documents to private sections, if any of those documents are available in any of the public sections, you can either proceed to upload those documents as public or skip the public ones and upload only the rest of them as private documents.
- Similarly, while bulk uploading documents to public sections, if any of those documents are available in any of the private sections, you can either proceed to upload those documents as public or skip the private ones and upload only the rest of them as public documents.
- From project documents or content library documents, when you upload a public document to a private section for the first time, the document would be added as a private document.
- When a private document is made public, an email will be triggered to the user who initially made it private, indicating that the private document has been made public.
- When private documents are added to a folder, on downloading the folder, only the documents associated with the sections that you have access to will be downloaded.
- Similarly, while copying the folder to the content library, only the documents associated with the sections that you have access to will be copied.
Private Discussions/Clarifications
You will have access to the discussions that are part of the private section you are a part of. You can post a discussion or reply. If it’s a restricted private section’s discussion, it would be disabled for you.
Project Tasks
You can view all tasks, irrespective of if you have access to a private section or not. All users can see the tasks associated with private sections. You can view the task properties, however, to access the task, you need to have access to its private section. Link to view the private section, any actionable buttons, three-dot menu, adding to calendar, nor the provision to complete the task will not be available.
Project Activities
- Whenever a section is marked as private, an activity will be recorded. Similarly, when a private section is made public, another activity will be recorded.
- All activities that happen within a private section will also be recorded, however, it would appear disabled if you do not have access to that private section.
Project Clarifications
Clarifications that are part of private sections will be visible to you even if you are not a part of the private section. You can also be a part of the clarification, however, you will not have access to any redirection links to the restricted private section. Also, the option to edit or delete the clarification will be unavailable.
Cloning/Duplicating projects
While cloning or duplicating a project, the private section’s responses and documents will not be cloned/duplicated to the new project.
Previewing Responses
Responses from the restricted private section will not be displayed.
Project Templates
While saving a project as template, only the properties and responses from the public sections will be added to the template. Responses and properties from the private sections will not be added.
Project Notes
If a project note is associated with a private section, the note will also be private. However, if a note is associated with both private and public sections, it would be public and not private.
Exporting Project
- While exporting, if there are private sections in the project, only the private sections accessible to you can be exported. Restricted private sections cannot be selected for export.
- If there are export packages with restricted private sections/documents, you will not be able to download them.
- Only packages with public sections/documents or private sections/documents where you have access to can be downloaded.
- In Export Settings, under Attachments to Include, if you have selected to include all attachments, the document from the restricted private sections will not be included.
- For reports, all properties of public sections and accessible private sections will only be included. Properties of restricted private sections will be excluded.
Share Responses
- While sharing responses with guest users, private sections will not be displayed.
- However, if the private section itself is shared to the guest, they will be able to preview the responses.
- Once a response is shared with the guest, if any of the public sections is made private, the guests will not be able to preview the private sections.
- The packages available to select for sharing will be the ones that you have access to, that is the packages without any restricted private sections for you.
- Once a package is exported, when a section is made private, the user can still download the exported package as the export was generated before the section was made private .
Other Actions
- While updating source file or View Import Configuration, an alert will be displayed citing that editing the file would impact the private sections in it.
- When a private section is deleted, it still remains private.
- Restricted private sections too remain as such.
- On restoration, it still remains private.
- Only users who have access to the private section can delete or restore the private sections.
- When a private question is moved to a public section, it will be made public.
- In the section TOC, private sections are displayed with a lock icon and restricted private sections are displayed as disabled.
- Even when the parent section is public, the subsection alone can be made private. If the parent section is private, all its subsections are also made private. However, if a public subsection is moved under a private parent section, the subsection remains public.
- You will not be allowed to delete a parent section which has restricted private subsections in it.
- After a public subsection is deleted, if its parent section is made private, the deleted subsection will also be made private.
- In past project search, only the private sections that you have access to will be listed.
- While performing Audit Answers, even if there are duplicate questions in a private section, it will not be fetched.