How to add a collaborator to edit Custom SQL datasets on Amazon QuickSight

Introduction

Amazon QuickSight supports multiple data sources. They can be native AWS services like Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift etc. or third-party solutions like Salesforce, Snowflake, Databricks etc.

When creating a dataset from these sources, you are able to either choose tables or views from the source or provide your own custom SQL. Often times, you may want to add a collaborator to the Custom SQL data source. Let’s see how to do that.

Solution

The first step is to share the dataset.

1. Go to the datasets page on the QuickSight console.
2. Click on your Custom SQL dataset and go to the permissions tab
3. Click on the “ADD USERS & GROUPS” dropdown on the right and search for the user that you want to collaborate with.
4. Once you choose the user, you have to make them the owner.

The next step is to add permissions to the underlying data source for this new user so they can modify the Custom SQL query. If you skip this part, the collaborator will see this error message when they try to edit the Custom SQL: You can’t execute the custom SQL query because you don’t have sufficient permissions to connect to the underlying data source.

1. Go to the datasets page and click on “New Dataset”
2. Scroll down to the “FROM EXISTING DATA SOURCES” section and find and click on your data source from which you created the dataset.
3. On the screen that pops up, click on “Share data source”
4. Click on the “Invite users” button and find the collaborator who you want to provide access to
5. Close the manage data source sharing window

Conclusion

The collaborator can now access and edit the Custom SQL that is used to build the dataset.

Author

Kasi Muthu - AWS