Overview
Two of the most far-reaching permissions in Mobaro are View Locations and View Location Groups. Granted on a Role, they let a User see activity across every Location on the account — regardless of which Locations they're a member of. They're useful in a few specific cases, but assigned casually they expose data far beyond what most Users should see. This article explains what they do and when to reach for them instead of scoped access.
Why this matters: These permissions are often granted as a quick fix — "just let them see the Locations" — when the real need is access to a handful of sites. That one shortcut can expose the entire account's data. Understanding the difference keeps your access model tight and your data confined to the people who need it.
What these permissions do
Permission | What it grants |
View Locations | Visibility into activity for every Location on the account, regardless of the User's own Location memberships. |
View Location Groups | The same broad visibility, applied across Location Groups — everything within the groups becomes visible. |
Critical: We strongly discourage granting View Locations and View Location Groups unless genuinely necessary. Assigning them to Users who don't need account-wide visibility can lead to accidental data exposure and loss of confidentiality.
Use scoped access instead
For almost everyone, the right approach is to scope access to the specific Locations a User actually works in — not to grant blanket visibility:
Grant access through membership, not the broad permission. Add the User (or a User Group they belong to) to the relevant Locations or Location Groups. See Giving Users access to a Location.
Reserve the broad permission for oversight roles. If someone genuinely needs to see every Location — an account-wide compliance reviewer, for instance — grant it deliberately to that managerial or administrative Role, and review it regularly.
Note: These permissions are the where, not the what. A Role still decides which actions a User can perform — View Locations only widens how many Locations those actions can reach. For the full model, see How access works in Mobaro.
Frequently asked questions
Q: I just want a User to see three Locations. Should I grant View Locations?
A: No — that exposes all of them. Add the User, or a User Group they're in, to those three Locations or a Location Group containing them.
Q: Who should have View Locations or View Location Groups?
A: Only Users who genuinely need account-wide visibility, such as senior managers or compliance reviewers. Treat both as high-impact permissions and review them during access audits.
Q: Does View Locations let a User edit those Locations?
A: No. It governs visibility. What a User can do is determined by the other permissions on their Role — see the Role permissions reference.