What is consumer access?
Consumer access provides a streamlined, read-only experience for business users to discover and consume dashboards, Genie spaces, and Databricks Apps shared with them. This access type is designed for non-technical users who require insights from analytics products without the complexity of full workspace functionality.
This page explains how workspace admins can grant consumer access, outlines the capabilities and restrictions for users with this entitlement, describes relevant data governance controls, and provides an overview of the user interface for consumers in the workspace.
Consumer access capabilities
Consumer access is a workspace entitlement that workspace admins can assign to individual users or user groups. It allows you to add business users to the workspace align permissions with a unified permissions model, but restrict their permissions so that they cannot create workspace objects. Because entitlements are additive, users benefit from the consumer experience only if consumer access is their sole entitlement within the workspace. Assigning additional workspace entitlements overrides the simplified consumer experience. To learn how to programatically manage group entitlements, see Clone a workspace group to a new account group.
Users with only the consumer access entitlement receive:
- A simplified workspace interface focused on consuming dashboards, Genie spaces, and Databricks Apps shared with them.
- Membership in the workspace’s users system group, displayed as the All workspace users group in the UI.
- Eligibility to be granted access to SQL warehouses for use with third-party BI tools such as Power BI and Tableau. However, consumer access users cannot view SQL warehouses or Query History, even if permissions on compute and data have been granted.
Users with only consumer access cannot create new objects in the workspace.
Users with consumer access inherit all entitlements assigned to the users system group. If this group is used to grant elevated privileges, such as workspace access or Databricks SQL access, move those grants to a different group to prevent privilege escalation. See Clone a workspace group to a new account group.
Data governance
Consumer access users are members of the workspace and work within the unified data access controls you've set up using Unity Catalog. They can view and run dashboards, Genie spaces, and apps shared specifically with them or shared with a group in which they are a member. If the sharing user has selected the option to use the viewer's data credentials, row-level and column-level security (RLS/CLS) applied. They can also be assigned permissions to use Unity Catalog-governed data in third-party BI tools.
Consumer workspace
When users with consumer access sign in, they are presented with a simplified workspace homepage. The interface is optimized for asset discovery and consumption, displaying only the tools relevant to their role.
- Recents and Favorites tabs populate with recently accessed or starred content.
- Popular tab highlights frequently visited assets by other workspace members.
- The left sidebar allows navigation by asset type:
- Dashboards: Access the dashboards listing page.
- Genie: Access the Genie spaces listing page.
- Databricks Apps: Access the Databricks Apps listing page.
Listing Pages
Both dashboards and Genie listing pages display assets shared with the user.
Filtering and search options include:
Tab / Filter | Description |
|---|---|
All | Displays all shared assets in the workspace. |
Favorites | Shows assets marked as favorites by the user. |
Popular | Lists assets frequently accessed by other users. |
Last modified | Filters assets by last edit time (Anytime, Last 24 hours, Last 7 days, Last 30 days). |
Owner | Filters assets by owner; multiple selections supported. |
The Last modified and Owner filters are available only when the All tab is selected. Filters can be combined for refined results.
Next Steps
For further guidance on working with dashboards, Genie spaces, and Databricks Apps, see: