Visibility rules now let you decide who sees whom based on the relationships between people. For example, you can let employees who share the same mentor see each other, let employees see their buddy, or let an HR business partner see everyone they support.
This is useful for larger organizations with complex structures, where people should see only the colleagues they work with, not the whole company.
What employee reference fields are
An employee reference field is a custom field on an employee's profile where you select another person, for example, Mentor, Buddy, HR business partner or Operations manager.
Before, visibility rules could only use a fixed value for these fields, for example, "Mentor is Maria Waller". Now you can also build rules around the relationship between the person viewing the profile (the viewer) and the people they see.
How to set up visibility based on employee reference fields
Go to Settings → Security → Roles & permissions.
Open the All people role or a custom role.
Go to the People tab.
Under Whose data can members access?, select Specific people.
Click Add condition.
Select the employee reference field as a condition (for example, Mentor).
When you add a condition based on an employee reference field, you can choose one of three new options:
Option | Who the viewer can see | Example with the Mentor field |
Same as viewer | People who have the same person in this field as the viewer | Employees see colleagues who have the same mentor as they do |
Assigned to viewer | The person selected in this field on the viewer's own profile | Employees see their own mentor |
Is viewer | People who have the viewer selected in this field | A mentor sees all the employees they mentor |
7. Click Save.
ℹ️ To learn more about other visibility settings, see People-level visibility in the "All People" role.
Example
Your company has a Mentor employee reference field. Kathleen Berman is the mentor for several employees, including Alex Johnstone, Sophie Farrell and Martin Waller.
Same as viewer: Sophie, Brian and Martin have the same mentor, so they can see each other in the Directory. Kathleen isn't shown to them.
Assigned to viewer: Sophie can see Kathleen, because Kathleen is her mentor.
Is viewer: Kathleen can see Sophie, Brian and Martin, because she is their mentor.
📢 In every case, people still see themselves, their own manager and their direct reports.
Important notes
These options are available to companies that have visibility rules enabled. They work in the All people role and in custom roles.
Keep the All people role the most restricted one. If All people already lets everyone see everyone, a stricter rule in a custom role won't hide anyone.
The options are available only under Whose data can members access?. You can't use them in Who is assigned this role?.
The Manager and Team lead roles don't use these options. Managers always see their direct reports, and employees always see their manager.
If the viewer's own field is empty, Same as viewer and Assigned to viewer don't show anyone.