Organization owners cannot access notebooks and change permissions if access is set to `can view` or `no access`

[thinkh]

Describe the bug A team member created a notebook, but the organization owner cannot see it (access = no access) or change the permission (access = can view) of this notebook.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to your team/organization -> Settings -> Membership with owner permission (= User A)
2. Invite a new member (= User B) with editor role to the team
3. User B needs to accept invitation
4. Switch to User B
5. Create a new notebook in that organization with Team visibility
6. Open the new notebook
7. Go to Share... dialog and change access for the organization to can view
8. Save changes
9. Switch back to User A
10. Open the notebook
11. Go to ... -> Share ...

All drop downs are disabled and cannot be changed by the owner of the organization.

Even worse, if User B sets the notebook access to no access for the organization it is invisible to the owner of the organization.

User B (member)

User A (owner)

Expected behavior

I would expect that the owner has the permission to see, manage, and possibly edit all(!) notebooks of the organization. Currently, I'm disabled because I cannot see or edit the notebooks.

Screenshots

See above.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows 11
• Browser: Firefox
• Version 121

Smartphone (please complete the following information):

• Device: [e.g. iPhone6]
• OS: [e.g. iOS8.1]
• Browser [e.g. stock browser, safari]
• Version [e.g. 22]

Additional context Add any other context about the problem here.

[mootari]

I would expect that the owner has the permission to see, manage, and possibly edit all(!) notebooks of the organization.

The current behavior is by design, as stated in our documentation:

By default, notebooks created in a private or Enterprise team workspace are private, meaning they are visible only to the notebook creator.

[thinkh]

Thanks for pointing me to the documentation. I had a look at it before but didn't find this section.

I think, I have a different understanding of the word "owner". In my opinion, the "owner" is responsible for the Observable organization including all notebooks created and possibly published. Currently, I can be the owner of the organization, but I have no control what is going on and made public within my organization nor can I change this.

In contrast, have a look at the roles and permissions in Slack as an example: The Workspace Owner has the highest permissions and can do (almost) everything (including access to private channels).

Don't get me wrong, I understand the rationale when the user selects no access that it should be private. But as soon as the notebook has can view access (and the owner can even see it) or it is private with additional collaborators, I'd expect that an organization owner can change the access to this notebook.

If Observable still like to keep it the way it is, it would be nice to have a button "request edit permission", which sends a notification to the notebook owner (not sure if this role exists). This would make it more obvious how a organization owner can get access to the notebook.

[mootari]

I can't comment on the current design, but I want to offer some notes that might help you address some of the challenges.

Default access: In your team's workspace settings you should see an option "Notebook defaults to private" which affects the preselected share setting when users create a new notebook:

We recently changed this setting to default to disabled for new teams, but you may still have it enabled in your settings.

Team visibility: Since August '22 we also enforce that a notebook must have the team visibility "can view" when it gets published. Notebooks that have been published before that date may still remain unshared.

Notebook ownership: Each notebook must have at least one editor. When a team member is removed from the team their private unpublished notebooks get deleted. If a notebook is published or if it has been view-shared with at least one other team member, then the team owners will receive edit access as well as an email notification.

Moderation: If your team is on the Enterprise tier we also offer an option to prevent editors from publishing notebooks as well as access to an audit log.

it would be nice to have a button "request edit permission"

I think we discussed an option like that internally, but to my knowledge there are no immediate plans. Are you able to contact the authors directly through other channels?

[mootari]

My description of the handling of notebooks owned by removed members was wrong. I've updated the section.