This guide explains how your role and your permission level on a specific report work together to determine what you see and can do in VividCharts, which sidebar tabs appear on the home page, which pages you can open, and which actions are available on a report within the Viewer.

If something in the app is greyed out, missing, or blocked, this is the guide to check.

VividCharts access comes from combining two independent settings:

• Your role: assigned to your ServiceNow account, applies everywhere in the app.

• Your permission level on a report: set per report, when someone shares it with you (or when you created it).

Neither one alone tells the whole story. A Builder with no permissions on a report you created can't see it. A Collaborator who's been given View + Share on your report can share it but can not edit it.

There are also a few feature roles that are independent of the above, you can hold any of them regardless of your base role:

The key difference: Refresher, VCAdmin, and VCCS work on their own. Holding the role is enough. Collaborator is different: it only does something in combination with the permission level of the specific report you're looking at. If a report hasn't been shared with you at View + Share level, being a Collaborator gives you nothing on that report.

Every report you can see has one of these levels, set when it's shared with you (or automatically, if you created it):

• View Only is the default for anyone a report is shared with, unless a higher level is explicitly chosen.

• View + Share requires the recipient to hold the Collaborator or Builder role — sharing this level with someone who doesn't have one of those roles has no effect until they're granted the role.

• Edit can only be granted to users who hold the Builder role. The system checks this before saving a share, so you can't accidentally give edit access to someone who can't use it.

• The report's creator always has Edit on their own report.

Your role decides which tabs show up, your permission level on any individual report doesn't affect the sidebar at all.

Notice the Editor is the one place where role and permission both have to line up, where the Builder role alone isn't enough if you haven't also been given Edit on that specific report, and Edit permission alone isn't enough if you're not a Builder.

Buttons for actions you can't complete (Share, Send as Attachment, Open Editor) are often hidden rather than shown-and-failing. If you don't see an action, it's because one of the two requirements above isn't met, not a bug.

“Why can't I share this report?”

Check two things: do you hold the Collaborator or Builder role, and does this specific report show View + Share or Edit for you? Both must be true — and if you're sharing to someone else, the report also needs to be published.

“Why can't I edit this report even though I'm a Builder?”

Builder role opens the door to the Editor page, but you also need Edit permission on that specific report. Ask the report's owner (or another Builder with edit access) to grant you Edit.

“I gave someone View + Share but they say they can't share it.”

View + Share only works if the recipient also holds the Collaborator or Builder role. Granting the permission level doesn't grant the role, those are set separately, by a ServiceNow admin.