Contributor License Users Cannot View Companies in a Typeahead Field

[StacKr]

My company uses a typeahead field on most of our templates to indicate which client a project is for. The typeahead references our list of Companies. With the Light license, our main users were able to see all companies in this field. I was hoping to move some of them to the Contributor license and the default Contributor access level, but that seems to have disrupted their ability to view other companies. After some experimentation I believe this is linked to having view access to Resource Management, but I don't see any documentation about why that might be. 

Does anyone know why this might be occurring, and if it is indeed linked to Resource Management?

[TerryHy]

Under the Contributor Access Level, have you already double checked the "Set additional restrictions..." section to see if the settings are correct for viewing companies/groups, etc. 

[StacKr]

Yes, the only option selected in that section is disabling the AI assistant

[KellieGardner]

I tested in my instance and confirmed this behavior. We also had no additional restrictions tied to the access level. 

I did change the light access level to no access on resource management and the light license was still able to see the companies, so I don't think it's tied to that. It has to be a permissions-based thing but I just can't find anything on experience league that shows what it is. 

Might be something for support to answer?

[KatherineLa]

Confirming the same behavior in our instance. I'm going to open a bug report with Support on it. There's no way they intentionally put a single typeahead field behind a paywall to require us to convert hundreds of users to paid licenses on purpose, I'm sure. Hopefully it will be fixed quickly, or my instance is going to come off the rails real quickly in a couple days. That type of field is crucial in almost all of our request queues.

[KellieGardner]

Curious what you'll find out. The new licensing model always seems to reveal something interesting. 

[StacKr]

Agreed. This is really throwing a wrench in our license management. If we have to build a workaround for typeahead fields, it would require a lot of extra time to recreate a feature that already exists. 

[KellieGardner]

@StacKr - Were you able to connect with support on your issue to ask?

[KatherineLa]

I've done some recordings for Support from our instance, and demonstrated a proof-of-concept for how I will use external lookup fields to circumvent the bug/security issue if necessary. Hopefully they will be able to address this quickly. 

[StacKr]

I'll submit a ticket today. I think it's likely a bug, but I'll update the post when I hear back.

[StacKr]

Well, folks, we have an answer! Directly from support:

"I have confirmed directly with our Product team that what you’re experiencing is actually expected behavior with the new license model. Contributors (similar to the old Requestor role) can only view companies they’re assigned to, based on their user profile or group access. This is part of the standard company security settings. On the other hand, users with a Light license (similar to the old Reviewer role) have wider visibility, which is why they can see the full list in the typeahead field.

We understand how this change might be causing challenges in your workflows. Our Product team is aware of this and is looking into ways to improve the experience to make this more flexible in the future. For now, if it’s essential for those users to have full visibility in the typeahead field, upgrading them to a Light license will restore that functionality."

So unfortunately this is a feature, and not a bug. I can understand why they built it like this, but I think it would be reasonable to at least have a setting to change these permissions (View, Contribute, Manage). I have to imagine our use cases aren't that uncommon. 

[KatherineLa]

So the solution to fix what they broke is to pay them for hundreds of unnecessary new licenses. That's...convenient. Looks like I need to start evaluating other vendors to handle our request queue functionality soon.