Request Visibility

You can use visibility settings to restrict who can view a request and its documents. Externally, you can control whether only the requester can see the request and its documents, or any member of the public who visits your portal. Internally, you can control which departments can see certain requests. For instance, if requests to a police department should only be visible to police staff.

Visibility Settings

There are several visibility settings. Think of request visibility as who can access a request. In order of the least restrictive to the most restrictive, the options are:

• Published: Least restrictive. The request is visible to everyone (the public) without requiring a login. Requesters will see the Public and Requester + Staff timeline entries and documents when logged in. All agency staff will have access to Staff timeline entries and documents when logged in.
• Embargoed: The request is set to All Staff and then a set amount of time after the request is closed it is set to Published
  
  Note: For this setting to be an option, embargoing must first be enabled for your organization. Review the Enable Embargoing for Your Account section below for more information.
• All Staff: The request is visible to the requester and to all agency staff that have a portal login
• Department only: The request is visible to the requester and to all staff in the assigned department(s), as well as support staff specifically assigned to the request
• Published - Department Only: Similar to Department Only, except that public users can view the request and any associated public documents.
• Restricted: Most restrictive. the request is visible only to the requester and to staff assigned specifically to it

Visibility Setting Levels

There are 3 levels of visibility settings:

• Organization-level visibility settings determine what the default visibility of a request is when it is initially created.
• Department-level visibility settings determine the default visibility of requests assigned to a particular department (this overrides organization-level settings).
• Request-level settings are specific to that particular request and override organization and department settings (this overrides department-level and organization-level settings).

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Enable Embargoing for Your Account

Embargoing allows you to set a request to be published a set amount of time after it is closed. It is useful for media requests where the request prefers that the information be made publicly available after a delay. You can turn off embargoing and/or manually publish requests on an individual basis.

Enable Embargoing for Your Account Instructions

1. Sign in to your account
2. Navigate to the Admin header and select the Portal Settings option in the dropdown:
   
3. Click Request Publishing/Visibility under the Policies heading:
   
4. Check the box labeled Enable embargoing for this account:
   
5. Enter the Embargo period for the number of hours after which embargoed requests are automatically published in the box
   
6. (Optional) Select the Embargoed radio button to have all requests set to Embargoed by default. You can also set this on a department level.
   
7. Click the Save button:
   

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Set the Organization-Level Default Visibility

Set the Organization-Level Default Visibility Instructions

1. Sign in to your account
2. Navigate to the Admin header and select the Portal Settings option in the dropdown:
   
3. Click Request Publishing/Visibility on the left-hand menu, under the Policies heading:
   
4. Select the Default Request Visibility that you want your organization's requests:
   
5. Click the Save button:
   

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Set the Department-Level Default Visibility

Changing the department-level default visibility will only change the visibility of new requests assigned to that department. Existing department requests will keep their current visibility settings.

The default department-level visibility must be set when creating a department. The steps below are for changing the default visibility of an existing department.

Set the Department-Level Default Visibility Instructions

1. Sign in to your account
2. Navigate to the Admin header and select Departments in the dropdown:
   
3. Click the Edit Department icon (pencil) next to the department you want to change the visibility for:
   
4. Click the Default Request Visibility dropdown menu and select a visibility option:
   
   
   • Account Default (Restricted): This option matches the organization's default request visibility.
   • Published: Everyone can view the request.
   • All Staff: All Admin, staff, and the requester can view the request.
   • Department-Only: Admin, all assigned departments' staff, and the requester can view the request.
   • Restricted: Admin, only assigned staff, and the requester can view the request.
     
     Note: In addition to the standard visibility options, departments have the additional visibility option Account Default. This will always match whatever the organization-level default visibility is.
   • Published - Department Only: Similar to Department Only, except that public users can view the request and any associated public documents.
5. Click the Save button below the department visibility drop-down menu
   

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Change the Visibility of a Request

Set the visibility of an individual request to override whatever the default organization and department visibility settings are.

Change the Visibility of a Request Instructions

1. Sign in to your account
2. Navigate to the All Requests tab at the top of the screen:
   
3. Select the request you want to set the visibility for:
   
4. Click the Edit icon (pencil) in the visibility bar at the top of the page:
   
5. Select the new visibility setting in the window that appears:
   
   
   • Staff: Only assigned staff members can view the request.
   • Published: Visible to the public.
   • Department: Only the assigned department(s) can view the request.
   • Published - Department Only: Similar to Department Only, except that public users can view the request and any associated public documents.
   • Restricted: Only assigned staff and the requester can view the request.
6. Click the Change Visibility button:
   

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