Privilege to see hidden objects in OBIEE 11g

My client wanted to hide some of the reports from the users and release them at a later date. The however wanted a set of users to have the privilege to see hidden objects. Let us see the process to achieve this objective.

While we can directly assign the privilege to the users, it is far better to do the following.

1. Create a power user group
2. Create a new role
3. Assign the group to the role
4. Assign the desired users to the group
5. Assign the privilege to the role. 

This is good practice since granting the same privilege to a new user will just be about adding the user to the group. You will also be able to add additional privileges to all the power users by just assigning the privilege to the role which has been assigned to the Power user group.

Let us now see the process

1. Login to the console and create a new user group by following the path shared below.
     Home >Summary of Security Realms >myrealm >Users and Groups    

2. Login to the EM and create an application role as shown below.

 
3. Assign your newly created group to the role that you are creating by clicking the Add button under the Members section

4. Go back to the console and follow the path shared below.
    Home >Summary of Security Realms >myrealm >Users and Groups >[User id to which the group has  to be assigned]     
    Go the the Groups tab and assign the group created in step 1 to the desired user.

5. Login to OBIEE portal, click on the Administration link and then on the Manage Privileges link.
    You will see the following in the list of Privileges. See Hidden Items privilege is assigned to the BIAuthor role by default. Click on this role. You will get an option to add your role to the list.

 
















6. All done, all users assigned to your newly created group will be able to see the Show Hidden Items check box as shown below.