What?
This is an article to document how to configure Zoho People and Zoho Analytics so that reporting teams can access analytics data restricted by region. It explains how to separate global HR access from regional reporting access, how to prevent users from viewing employee or payroll data outside their area of responsibility, and how to structure workspaces, dashboards, and data imports to support this model in a controlled and repeatable way.

Why?
The use-case here is a globally operating organisation with regional HR teams who must only be able to access data for the regions they are responsible for. HR users need to view advanced analytics dashboards through Zoho People as part of their daily work, while remaining restricted when accessing Zoho Analytics directly, and reporting teams require analytical access without exposure to data outside their assigned regions.

How?
So as a high-level this document will cover the following:

1. Configure Zoho People and Zoho Analytics access
2. Restrict the Dashboards for HR staff.
3. Create restricted Workspaces for MI teams (reporting staff).

This article outlines the recommended approach for configuring Zoho People and Zoho Analytics to support regional data segregation. It describes how access to HR dashboards, payroll reporting, and analytical data should be structured to prevent cross-region visibility, which would constitute a data protection breach.

The guidance separates HR access from Analytics access, uses region-specific workspaces where required, and applies least-privilege principles so users can access only the data necessary for their role and region.

Although the document is written in a broadly linear order, the practical setup often involves moving back and forth between Zoho People and Zoho Analytics. This document records the final design and a repeatable process that can be followed and adapted for future clients with similar requirements.

Configure Zoho People

Enable Advanced Analytics for HR staff

HR staff require access to Zoho Analytics dashboards from within Zoho People via Advanced Analytics. This should not be confused with the standard Analytics feature under Zoho People > Reports.

In Zoho People:

• Navigate to Reports
• Select the Advanced Analytics tab

If the Advanced Analytics tab is not visible:

1. Log in as a Zoho People Super Admin
2. Go to Setup using the cog icon in the top-right
3. Click Marketplace
4. Select the Zoho tab
5. Enable Advanced People Analytics
6. Once enabled, the button changes to View Details
7. Open the configuration panel and click Edit Configuration
8. Review the sync schedule, hourly is within threshold for 1000+ employees
9. Under “Allow analytics dashboard to be accessed by non-administrator users”, add all HR users irrespective of region
10. Click Save Configuration

HR users will not see the Advanced Analytics tab until at least one dashboard has been shared with them.

Configure Zoho Analytics

Create the “master” workspace

1. Log in to Zoho Analytics as an Account Admin
2. Confirm you are on the Home page, with the company name visible in the top-left
3. Confirm the Workspaces tab is selected
4. Click Import Your Data
5. Search for Zoho People
6. Select the Zoho People data source
7. Name the workspace, for example “Zoho People Analytics”
8. Select the correct Zoho People organisation

Once the first sync completes:

• Open the workspace
• Go to Data Sources
• Edit the Zoho People data source by clicking on its row
• Click on “Edit Setup”
• Select all required tables and fields

This workspace acts as the master dataset and should contain the full global Zoho People data.

Check on Permissions

Make the Global HR Manager a Workspace Admin or create a specific role that has access to all data and change the user’s role to it (eg. “HR Global”). This is only for the Global HR Manager. The regional HR managers and their teams are instead added to their respective workspaces (not this master one).

At this stage, global HR manager(s) can login to Zoho People and Zoho Analytics and will see all the dashboards and data tables that are installed with the synchronization to Zoho People.

Regional HR and their teams will still not see any dashboards from within Zoho People, nor anything in Zoho Analytics.

Out-of-the-box dashboards

Two dashboards are typically created automatically:

• Employee Dashboard
• Overview Dashboard

These may not appear inside a specific workspace. To locate them:

• Go to the Zoho Analytics Home page
• Select the Dashboards tab

In practice, dashboards should be built using SQL-query driven datasets so that:

• Lookup values are displayed instead of internal IDs
• Region-based filtering can be applied at the dashboard level

Dashboards are duplicated using Save As and adjusted per region.

Add a test user

1. In Zoho Analytics, click the top-level cog icon to open organisation settings
2. Go to Manage Users
3. Click Add Users
4. Add a test user with the role “User”
5. The user must accept the invitation email within 7 days
6. Confirm the user:
   • Exists in Zoho People
   • Is included in the non-admin analytics access list configured earlier

Roles vs Groups

We will be using Zoho Analytics roles for controlling access to the scope of the data. In other words, being able to see all data, or just the data in their region depending on which workspace they are added to. User Groups are introduced later to simplify access management and accommodate staff turnover.

In other words, we will use groups to control access to dashboards (Zoho People Reports) and roles to control access within workspaces (Zoho Analytics Data).

Create a Role

1. Click on the cog icon in the top-right to get to the organization settings
2. Under “General”, click on “Manage Roles”
3. Click on “Add New Role”
4. Give it a “Role Name”, I’m calling mine “HR”
5. It has “Access Permissions” to “All Dashboards”, “All Reports and Dashboard”, and “All Data, Reports and Dashboards”
6. It has “Create Permissions” to “Create Dashboards”, “Create Reports”, “Create Table / Import Data”, “Create Query Table”, “Create Folder”, “Formula Column…”
7. It has NO “Data Permissions”
8. It has “Design Permission”
9. It has “Interaction Permissions”
10. It has “Sharing & Collaboration Permissions”
11. It has some “Publishing Permissions”
12. Click on “OK”

These are all option on how to set but for the example of this demo, I’m creating a HR role that will be able to do the standard reporting stuff. Repeat the above for adding other roles.

Share the Employee dashboard with the test user

1. Login as a system administrator (account/organization admin) and browse to the Zoho People Analytics workspace (what we’re calling the master workspace)
2. Go to Settings > then “Manage Groups” > then “Add New Group”
3. Give it a “Group Name” (for example: APAC)
4. Enter email addresses or “Pick Users”
5. Open the Employee Dashboard
6. Click Share, then Share this View
7. Click on “Pick Users / Groups”
8. Select the Group: “APAC”
9. Click Apply Permissions & Filters
10. Grant:
    • Read Options
    • View underlying data
    • Export Data (if required)
    • Drill Down and Drill Through
11. Do not enable any sharing options other than “Allow Commenting”
12. Click the chevron-left to go back to the share panel
13. Untick Send Invitation Mail
14. Click on “Share”

Test behaviour

As the test user:

• Log in to Zoho People
• Navigate to Reports and then Advanced Analytics
• The Employee Dashboard should be visible and usable

As the test user:

• Log in to Zoho Analytics
• Navigate to the Zoho People Analytics workspace
• Only the shared dashboard should be visible
• No tables, queries, or report editing should be accessible

At this stage, the user will be able to see employees across all regions, which is expected.

Remove the Test User from the Employee Dashboard

Well simply remove the group that test user is in (managed in the previous step) by:

1. Log back in as an Analytics admin
2. Browse to the “Employee Dashboard”
3. Click on “Share” then on “Edit Shared Details”
4. Tick the checkbox next to the group name and select “Remove”

Create a regional restricted dashboard

1. Log back in as an Analytics Admin
2. Browse to the “Employee Dashboard”
3. Next to the save icon, click on the vertical ellipsis (three-dots) and select “Save As”
4. Give it a name and description, I’m calling mine “Employee Dashboard – APAC”
5. Click on “Edit Design”
6. Ensure you’ve added “Location” as a user filter (the name not the Zoho ID)
   1. Add/edit the user filter “Location”
   2. Choose Component Type as “Single Select Box” or “Multi Select Box”
   3. Specify “List Selected Values”
   4. Select only the required regional values
   5. Make sure you untick the “Others” option directly below these
   6. Set behaviour to “List only relevant values”
   7. Click on “OK”
7. “Save” the changes to the dashboard and return to “View Mode”
8. Click on “Share” then “Share this View”
9. Click on “Pick Users / Groups” and search/select the Group you created earlier.
10. Apply permissions as needed (see previous steps)
11. Untick “Send Invitation Mail”
12. Click on “Share”
13. Share the regional dashboard with the test user and re-test access

At this stage, the test user will only see the newly filtered/copied dashboard without the ability to create/manage new reports or modify its design.

Repeat this step for creating the various dashboards for each region.

Restricting Zoho Analytics for regional reporting teams

Some users, such as payroll or MI teams, require direct access to Zoho Analytics to build their own reports. In this case, dashboard-level filtering is insufficient.

To prevent regional data exposure:

• Separate workspaces must be created per region
• Each workspace will be driven based on queries from the “master” workspace.
• Synchronization is only possible as a minimum every 3 hours. (at time of print)

Creating a regional workspace

You cannot create a second Zoho People integration. Attempting to do so results in the error:

“The Zoho People integration for the portal ‘<your_company>’ is already configured in the Zoho Analytics workspace ‘Zoho People Analytics’. You cannot set up another integration with the same account.”

1. Navigate to Zoho Analytics Home
   1. Log in to Zoho Analytics using an Organisation Admin or Account Admin account
   2. Confirm you are at the top-level home screen:
      1. If a Home link appears in the top-left corner, click it
      2. Confirm the organisation name and the list of workspaces are visible
   3. Confirm the Workspaces tab is selected
2. Start a new workspace import
   1. Click “Import Your Data” in the top-right corner
   2. Select Zoho Analytics Workspace
   3. Enter a workspace name, for example “Zoho People Analytics – APAC”
   4. Optionally enter a description, such as “Regional analytics workspace restricted to APAC”
   5. From the list of available workspaces, select the master “Zoho People Analytics” workspace
   6. Click Next
3. Choose import data
   1. On the “Select Data to Import” screen, select Single Table
   2. From the available tables, select “Location” (just for demo, there is a set of multiple core ones to select and then custom query ones suggested later in this document).
   3. Click Next
4. Review table structure
   1. Review the column list and detected data types
   2. Confirm no changes are required
   3. Click Create
5. Schedule the import
   1. Click on “Schedule this Import”
   2. This opens the next panel.
6. Select records to import
   1. Select All records
   2. Select Add records and replace if already exists
   3. Under “Select the column(s) to match existing records”, select “ID”
   4. Tick “Include new columns added in your source table(s) automatically into destination Location table(s)”
   5. Click Next
7. Configure schedule settings
   1. Set Repeat to Every ‘N’ Hours
   2. Set the interval to 3 hours
   3. Set notifications to Never if using a system or service email. If you are a superadmin logged-in with your own e-mail, then consider having it send a failure notification.
   4. Click Save
8. Confirm successful import
   1. Wait for the initial sync to complete (should be quick)
   2. Confirm the Location table appears in the workspace
   3. Confirm the sync status shows Success
9. Repeat the above for all required tables:
   1. See my list below for the core tables and for custom queries.

Set Permission for the New Workspace

Setup roles as mentioned earlier in this document.

Login as the Zoho Analytics system administrator

1. Browse to the new workspace
2. Click on the “Settings” in the left sidebar (not the one at the top-right).
3. Select “Manage Users” and add the test user to here with the “HR” role. (or whichever role you setup earlier that has access to a lot.)
4. The “Test User” will now have access to Zoho Analytics and all the data tables in that workspace.

Add the filtered data with Custom Queries

So I’ve got a table of all the core tables plus some Zoho project and custom ones.

1. Filter the following table by Column B by the value “Multiple Tables”. Go to create a workspace and select all the tables with this filter to import in one go.
   1. Schedule to Every ‘N’ Hours > 3 hours > Notify me after 5 consecutive failures trigger when at least 10 tables fail. Also notify “All Organization Admins”.
   2. Go to “Data Sources”. You should see a “Sync in Progress”.
2. Let’s go do all the custom queries…
   1. Go to the newly created workspace (ensuring it’s selected in the top-left and not the master workspace).
   2. Go to “Data Sources” (left sidebar) and click on “Add Data Sources” (top right button)
   3. Select “Zoho Analytics Workspace”
   4. In Step 1. Select the master workspace “Zoho People Analytics” > Next
   5. In Step 2: select “Custom Query”, paste the query prepared in your spreadsheet, (copy the table name you’re about to create from the SQL and paste in the next step) > Next
   6. In Step 3: give it a table name and hit “Create”
   7. In Step 4: (no number?) edit Schedule, add records and replace if already exists, ID, Include new columns > Next
   8. In Step 5: (still no number?) set Every 3 Hours and hit “Save”.
3. Repeat the above for the remaining custom query tables.