Platform Users and Dashboards
Lots of us want to manage reports and dashboards for our users, including Platform Users in a lot of cases. The problem is, if a regular Salesforce user creates a dashboard and sets it to “Run As” the currently logged-in user, it won’t work for a Platform user. Why? Because it was saved with more permissions than the Platform User has. Full-boat Salesforce users have a different set of capabilities with Dashboards than Platform Users, so the Dashboard has to be saved as a Platform User in order for it to be viewable by any Platform User.
So you’ve got two choices.
The one-off workaround is to have a Platform User edit/save that Dashboard. That means you have to temporarily add “Manage Reports and Dashboards” to one of your Platform users and then log in as that user, save the Dashboard the way you want it, and then go remove those permissions from that User.
Have a “Platform Admin” user that you use for these cases, that has “View Setup”, “Manage Reports and Dashboards”, etc, that you can use to edit those dashboards. This means you have to burn a SF license, but at least it’s not a Full Boat license.
So here’s the JTS solution.
Create a Permission Set, called “Managed Reports and Dashboards”. Be sure and leave the ‘License’ field blank when you create this Permission Set. That allows you to assign the same Permission set to both full-boat Salesforce users AND Platform users.
In that Permission Set, enable the “Manage Reports in Public Folders” and “Manage Reports in Public Folders” permissions. There are some other things that will get checked automatically when you do that; it’s okay.
Now go assign this Permission Set to one of your Platform Users. Go to one of your Platform users, and at the very top of the page, hover over “Permission Set Assignments” and click on “Edit Assignments”. Find your new Permission Set in the box on the left and click the arrow to move it over to the box on the right, and click ‘Save’.
Go Log in as this Platform User.
Open the Dashboard that you want them to be able to view.
Click ‘Edit’
Click ‘Save’
Log out as this Platform User.
Go back to their User record and remove the “Manage Reports and Dashboards” Permission Set from the User. Hover over the “Permission Set Assignments” link at the top of their User record and click on “Edit Assignments”. Find your new Permission Set in the box on the right and move it back over to the left, and then click ‘Save’.
To confirm everything worked, log back in as your Platform User, navigate to the Dashboard you just edited, and you should be able to see it.
That’s all there is to it. You literally just have to save the Dashboard as any Platform User in order for all Platform Users to be able to view the dashboard.
