Browse legitimate interest assessments

Browse Legitimate Interest Assessments

The Legitimate Interest Assessments screen is your central register for every balancing test your organisation has conducted under GDPR Article 6(1)(f). If your organisation relies on legitimate interest as a lawful basis for any processing activity, regulators and auditors will expect you to show documented evidence that you worked through the three-part test — purpose, necessity, and balancing. This screen is where all of that evidence lives. Data Protection Officers, compliance officers, and privacy managers visit it daily to review existing records, create new ones, and keep the register audit-ready. It is the starting point for the entire legitimate interest module in DPMS.

How to open it

In the main left-hand sidebar, look for the Privacy or Data Protection section and click Legitimate Interest. The screen opens directly on the full list — there are no sub-menus to navigate.

You need at least one of the following access levels:

• Standard read access — lets you see all legitimate interest records in your organisation.
• Read own records only — lets you see only the records where you are listed as a responsible person. The layout looks identical, but the table will be pre-filtered to show only your records.

Users with neither level of access will see an "access denied" page.

The ability to import records from a JSON file requires an additional import permission on top of the read access described above.

What you see

The screen opens on a full-width content area headed Legitimate Interest. Virtually all of the space is taken up by a data table listing every assessment your organisation has created. Above the table is a compact toolbar: a search bar on the left, filter controls in the middle, and action buttons — including the Create button and export icons — on the right.

The table has four columns: Name, Organizational Unit, Affected Persons, and Created At. Every row is a single assessment. The name column is the primary navigation handle — clicking anywhere on a row opens that assessment's full detail view. If an assessment has a change request waiting for a decision, a small visual indicator appears in its row.

Above the toolbar you will see a single tab labelled All. This is the only active tab at the moment; status-based tabs (Active, Draft, Inactive, Review) are not yet enabled, so filtering by status is done through the filter controls instead. If your organisation shares records with partner companies, shared records appear in the same table alongside your own, distinguished by a company label.

Working with this screen

Finding an existing assessment

When you arrive on the screen, the table shows every assessment your permissions allow you to see. If your register has grown large, the quickest way to find a specific record is to type its name — or part of it — into the search bar at the top left. The table narrows in real time to show only matching records.

For more targeted filtering — for example, showing only assessments belonging to the Marketing department or only records with a particular status — use the filter controls next to the search bar. Each filter you apply appears as a chip in the toolbar and stays active as you scroll. Once you spot the assessment you need, click anywhere on its row to open the full detail view, where you can review all three sections of the test: General, Necessity, and Balancing of Interests.

If you see a small indicator icon on a row, that assessment has at least one pending change request — a proposed edit submitted by a colleague or stakeholder that has not yet been accepted or rejected. Open the record to review and act on it.

Creating a new assessment from scratch

Click the Create button in the top-right corner. A small dropdown menu appears. Select Create from the menu.

You will be taken to the creation form, which opens on the General tab. Fill in the assessment name, assign it to an organisational unit, choose the affected persons (for example, Customers or Employees), and add a short description of the processing activity you are assessing. When you click Save, DPMS creates the record and immediately takes you into the edit view of the new assessment, where you can continue working through the Necessity tab and the Balancing of Interests tab. The new assessment will appear in the table on this screen as soon as it is saved.

Tip: Always assign an organisational unit when you create a new assessment. Records without one show a blank cell in the Organizational Unit column, which makes them harder to find, sort, and assign to the right team later.

Importing a batch of assessments

If you have a set of assessments that were previously exported from DPMS — or prepared elsewhere in the correct format — you can bring them in all at once rather than creating them individually.

Click the Create button and select Import from the dropdown. Your operating system's file picker opens, filtered to show only .json files. Select one or more files and confirm. DPMS uploads the files and, on success, reloads the index page so the newly imported records appear immediately in the table.

Heads up: The import function accepts JSON files only. Even though DPMS can export records as XLSX, you cannot import XLSX files — the file picker will simply ignore them. If the upload encounters an error (for example, a malformed file), the import is silently aborted; no records are added and the table stays unchanged.
>
Heads up: If you do not have the import permission, the file picker will still open when you click Import, but selecting a file will do nothing and no error message will appear. If you suspect this is happening, contact your system administrator.

Exporting the full list for offline reporting

When you need to provide a snapshot of all legitimate interest assessments to an auditor, legal counsel, or supervisory authority, use the export buttons in the toolbar.

First, make sure the table shows exactly the records you want to include. If you want everything, confirm that the All tab is selected and that no filters are active. Then click either the JSON export button or the XLSX export button. Your browser will immediately download a file containing every record currently visible in the table, with columns for name, organisational unit, affected persons, and creation date. The export is scoped to what your read permissions allow, so shared records from partner organisations will be included if they are visible to you.

Field reference

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

This screen is the entry point for the legitimate interest module. Every record you create here becomes available for linking throughout DPMS:

• Records of Processing Activities (ROPAs): The detail view of a ROPA can reference a legitimate interest assessment to document the lawful basis for a processing activity, making the justification directly traceable from the processing register.
• Tasks: You can link tasks to an assessment from within the assessment's detail view. Those tasks then track remediation actions, review deadlines, or follow-up work connected to the assessment.
• Third-party assessments: Assessments and vendor assessments can be linked to a legitimate interest record, creating a joined audit trail across vendor management and privacy compliance.
• Group sharing: If your organisation publishes records to a shared library for partner organisations, the sharing options for each assessment are accessible from within the assessment's detail view (via the three-dot menu). The sharing feature depends on a legitimate interest record existing here first.

After you finish creating or updating an assessment on this screen, the next step is typically to open the record and complete the Necessity and Balancing of Interests tabs within the detail view. Those tabs contain the substantive legal analysis that regulators will scrutinise.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: Use the filter controls to find records by status, organisational unit, or affected persons. The All tab cannot be used to filter by lifecycle state — status-based tabs are not active yet. The filter controls are the correct tool for that job.

Heads up: The All tab is currently the only tab available. If you are expecting to click a "Draft" or "Active" tab to narrow the list, those tabs do not function yet. Use the filter controls instead.

• Infinite scroll, not pagination. There is no "next page" button. To find a record that is not visible on screen, scroll down to load more records automatically, or use the search bar and filters to narrow the list first.
• Import is JSON-only. Exporting works in both JSON and XLSX formats, but importing back into DPMS currently only supports JSON. If you export to XLSX and then try to import that file, nothing will happen.
• Row-level action icons are placeholders. Each row shows a set of small icons (including a ban icon, an envelope icon, a memo icon, and a print icon). These buttons are visible but do not yet perform any action — they are part of a planned feature. Do not include them in any current workflow.
• Shared records appear in the same table. If your organisation uses group sharing and another organisation has published legitimate interest records to the shared library, those records will appear in your table. Use the filter controls to separate your own records from shared ones if needed.
• The back button always returns here. The detail view and creation form both include a back link that returns you to this index screen, so you can always navigate back to the full list without losing your place.