Assigning Audiences to Elements

Compliance officers, DPOs, and IT admins use Audience Management to build reusable access groups — called Audiences — that control exactly which users and partner companies can see or edit specific DPMS records, from Assets and RoPAs to Incidents and DSARs, all without touching each record individually.

Audience Management is the engine behind controlled data sharing in DPMS. Instead of opening every record and manually adding people one by one, you build an Audience once — give it a name, attach users, link partner companies, and define what they can read or edit — and then assign that Audience to as many elements as you like. The moment you save an Audience assignment to a record, every member of that Audience gains precisely the access level you configured, and no more.

This article walks you through the complete lifecycle: creating and configuring an Audience in Compliance Settings, and then assigning it to individual elements (or batches of elements) across the platform.

How to open it

To manage Audiences:

Open the left-hand sidebar and click IT Settings.
Under the Audience Management section, click the Audience Management item.
You land on the Audience list at /compliance/settings/audiences.

You need the View Audiences permission to see this page. If you have that permission but not the Edit Audiences permission, you can browse the list but cannot click into individual records. The Create button is only visible to users with the Create Audiences permission.

To assign an Audience to a specific element:

Navigate to any element detail view (e.g., open an Asset from the Asset Register) and use the three-dot menu or the element's left-side navigation tabs — both are described in the Working with this screen section below.

Heads up: The Sharing option only appears in element menus if your IT Admin has enabled Sharing for your organisation in IT Settings. If you do not see it, check with your IT Admin.

What you see

The Audience list is a clean, searchable table with a single Name column. Above the table on the right side is the Create button; a search bar sits to its left. Each row represents one Audience — click a row to open its configuration form (provided you have edit permission). Audiences shared from external partner companies may appear with a visual indicator distinguishing them from internally created ones.

The Audience edit form has a consistent two-panel layout. On the left is a vertical tab menu with four steps: General, Add Companies, Add Users, and Add Permissions. The right panel shows the active tab's form fields. A blue Save button is always visible in the header, and an X button in the top-right returns you to the Audience list. When you are creating a brand-new Audience, the last three tabs appear locked — they unlock only after you save the General tab for the first time.

Working with this screen

Creating a new Audience from scratch

The most common reason you come here is to set up a new Audience for an external partner company or an internal department that needs scoped access.

On the Audience list, click Create (top-right) and select Create Audience from the small dropdown that appears.
The form opens on the General tab. Type a clear, descriptive name in the Name field — something colleagues will recognise, such as "Finance Partner — Read Only" or "Legal Team — Full DPIA Access". Add an optional Description to explain the audience's purpose for future reference. In the Responsible Person field, select yourself or whoever will own this audience going forward. If you leave this blank, it defaults to your own account.
Click Save. DPMS creates the Audience record and immediately moves you to the Add Companies tab. This first save is the step that unlocks all remaining tabs.
On the Add Companies tab, open the Assigned Companies dropdown. This list is populated from the consulted/partner companies already registered in your DPMS. Select every company whose users should be part of this Audience, then click Save. DPMS moves you to the Add Users tab.
On the Add Users tab you will see a searchable table of users from your own organisation (external partner-company users are not listed here — their access comes through the company assignment you just made). Tick the checkboxes next to each person who should be an Audience member. When done, click Save. DPMS moves you to Add Permissions.
The Add Permissions tab is where you define what Audience members can actually do. At the top, a dropdown shows the companies you added in step 4 — select one to configure its permissions. Below, a grid lists every element type (RoPA, TOMs, Assets, DPIA, Assessments, Legitimate Interest, Documents, Projects, Incidents, Data Subject Requests) with a Read Access and Write Access checkbox for each. Tick the combinations that match what you want to grant. If you have multiple companies, use the Select All checkbox per column to speed things up, then switch to the next company in the dropdown and repeat. Remember to click Save after configuring each company — permissions are stored per company, and switching the dropdown without saving discards your changes.
After the final save, the Audience is fully configured and will immediately appear in the Audiences dropdown on every relevant element edit form across DPMS.

Assigning an Audience to a single element

Once your Audience exists, assigning it to a record takes less than a minute.

Navigate to the element you want to share — for example, open a specific Asset from the Asset Register.
In the top-right corner of the detail view, click the three-dot (⋯) menu. If Sharing is enabled for your organisation, you will see a Sharing option in the dropdown.
Click Sharing. DPMS takes you directly to that element's edit form with the Group Sharing tab already open.
In the Audiences dropdown on the Group Sharing tab, search for and select the Audience you want to assign. The dropdown shows each Audience alongside its permission indicators, so you can confirm at a glance whether it grants read or write access for this element type. Note that if an Audience was not configured with read access for this particular element type (e.g., Assets), it will not appear in the list at all.
Click Save. From this moment, every user who is a member of that Audience — and every user belonging to the Audience's associated partner companies — can access this element with the permissions you configured.

Tip: You can also reach the Group Sharing tab by expanding the element's left-side navigation menu and clicking the Sharing tab directly — useful when you are already inside an element's edit form.

Assigning an Audience to many elements at once (Manage Access)

When you need to grant the same Audience access to a large batch of records simultaneously, use the Manage Access bulk action rather than editing each element one by one.

Navigate to any list view — for example, the RoPA list or the Asset Register.
Use the checkboxes on the left of each row to select all the records you want to update.
A toolbar appears with bulk actions. Click Manage Access.
In the Manage Access form, choose the Audience from the Audiences dropdown. You can also add individual users here — note that users added directly through Manage Access receive write permissions.
Click Save. DPMS applies the Audience assignment to every selected record in one operation.

Reviewing the change history for an element's audience assignment

Whenever you need to audit who assigned or removed an Audience from a specific record, the Activity Log gives you a full, timestamped trail.

Open the element detail view (e.g., an Asset).
Look for the clock icon (Activity Log) in the top-right area of the content panel and click it.
A drawer slides in from the right showing a chronological list of all changes to that element, including audience assignment events.
When you are done, click anywhere outside the drawer or use its own close button to dismiss it.

This button is only visible if you have read permission for that element type, and it is hidden on elements that are in shared or consulted mode.

Field reference

Name — The display name of the Audience. Supports multiple languages with built-in AI translation. This is what colleagues will see in every Audiences dropdown across the platform. Required — an Audience without a name cannot be meaningfully used.

Description — A free-text explanation of the Audience's purpose. Not required, but strongly recommended so team members understand who this Audience is for without needing to open it.

Responsible Person — One or more users from your organisation who are accountable for managing this Audience. Defaults to your own account if left empty.

Assigned Companies (Add Companies tab) — The partner or consulted companies whose users should belong to this Audience. Populated from the consulted companies already registered in your DPMS.

Read Access / Write Access (Add Permissions tab) — Per-element-type access flags, configured separately for each company in the Audience. Read Access lets a company's users view an element; Write Access lets them edit it. Both are configured in the checkbox grid on the Add Permissions tab.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

Audiences sit at the centre of DPMS's cross-company sharing model. Everything downstream depends on what you configure here:

Every element's Audiences dropdown (on edit forms for RoPA, Assets, TOMs, DPIA, and all other supported types) is drawn from the Audiences you create on this screen. If no Audiences exist, those dropdowns are empty everywhere.
The Group Sharing tab on elements is where Audiences are applied to individual records — but the options available there are only as good as the Audiences configured here, and they are filtered to match the element type. An Audience without DPIA read access enabled will never appear in the DPIA Group Sharing dropdown.
Manage Access (the bulk-assignment form on list views) also reads from the same Audience list. It respects the same company and element-type filters, so a well-configured Audience makes bulk operations fast and reliable.
Cross-company data sharing: Partner company users see shared elements in their own DPMS instance only because of Audience assignments. The Audience is the bridge between your data and their view.

After finishing your Audience setup here, return to the elements you want to share and use the Group Sharing tab (or Manage Access for bulk work) to complete the assignment.

Tips & common pitfalls

Heads up: Always save the General tab before trying to access Add Companies, Add Users, or Add Permissions. When creating a new Audience, those three tabs are locked until a record ID exists — which only happens after the first save. This is the most common source of confusion for first-time users.

Heads up: Permissions are per-company, not global. If your Audience includes three partner companies, you must select each company in the Add Permissions dropdown and save separately for each one. A single save applies only to whichever company is currently selected in the dropdown.

An Audience only appears in an element's dropdown if it has the right access flag. The dropdown for Assets will only show Audiences that have Assets read access enabled. If an Audience is missing from a dropdown, go back to Add Permissions and confirm the correct element type is ticked.
You cannot add external partner-company users individually. The Add Users tab only shows users from your own organisation. Partner-company users gain access through the company-level assignment on the Add Companies tab — not as named individuals.
Saving on the Add Permissions tab may take you to an unexpected place. If you arrived at the Audience form by following a link from another part of DPMS, the final save may navigate you back to that originating screen rather than staying on the Audience form. This is by design — DPMS is returning you to where you came from.
Super Administrators never appear in the Add Users list. They have full access by default and are excluded from the user selection table.
Use the search bar on the Audience list to quickly find an existing Audience before creating a duplicate. With many Audiences in a large organisation, duplicates are easy to create accidentally.