Collaboration — roles, access rules & approval
XCubes is built for teams contributing to the same model — for example regional managers each entering their own numbers into a shared budget. Three mechanisms work together: roles, access rules, and the approval workflow.
Roles & members
Invite people to a project from the Team Members panel and give each a role:
- Owner — the project creator.
- Admin — manages members, sharing, access rules, and approvals.
- Editor — can enter and change cube data.
- Viewer — read-only.
Access rules — scope what a user sees and edits
For any cube, an admin can give a specific user an access rule that limits:
- what they see — only certain dimension items (e.g. only the East region), and
- what they can edit — make some of those items read-only, or let them edit only their own slice.
This is how you open a model up for contribution safely: everyone works in the same cube, but each person only touches their own area. (Access rules are about contribution scope, not security hardening.)
Approval workflow
Contributions can be gated by a review step. The Workflow panel tracks each dimension item (typically a time period) through states:
- Draft — an editor is still working.
- Submitted — the editor submits it for review (optionally with a comment); the item's cells lock so nothing changes underneath the reviewer.
- Approved — an admin approves; the item stays locked as the agreed figure.
- Rejected — an admin sends it back to draft with a comment explaining why.
An admin can reopen an approved or rejected item to allow further edits. While an item is submitted or approved, its cells are locked for everyone — that's what makes the figure trustworthy once it's signed off.
How edit permission is decided
When someone tries to change a cell, XCubes checks, in order: is the cell within their access rule's visible area → do they have write permission there → is the item workflow-locked (submitted/approved) → is the cell individually locked. The first failing check blocks the edit with a clear reason.
To share results read-only instead of opening contribution, see Sharing.