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Inherited Permissions not Honored in GA4 Insights Notifications
Hey there! So, we’re an agency working with heaps of clients across loads of accounts and properties. We’re eager to set up a whole bunch of core Insights for every GA4 property and want these insights to wing their way to our internal team by email.
Now, according to the Insights creation page, it goes something like this: “Bang in the emails of the users below and they’ll be notified, provided they have access to the property.” Sounds good, right?
Hang on though! Our tests are giving us a different story. Emails tied to accounts that have rights to the property through the fancy term “inheritance” (like permissions given at the account or organization level), don’t seem to get the alerts if added to the list. In fact, one of our org admins only started receiving alerts after we gave them the “Viewer” pass at the property level specifically. Talk about picky!
And, to prove we’re not seeing things, just try creating an alert that’s bound to happen, like Page Views > 1, and pop in the email of an account that’s got Viewer or higher permissions from their “inheritance”. Notice anything? We bet there’ll be no alert!
Sure, we found a way around this, but it’s a bit of a slog to manage everything at the property level, and we just cannot help but think something’s off. Either Google slipped up with how this is working, or the way they talk about it is totally bamboozling. Or is it just us getting our wires crossed?
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2 Replies
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From the issue you’ve presented, it seems you’ve understood the requirements for setting up Insights correctly, but Google Analytics 4 (GA4) appears to be functioning differently than expected. The challenge here appears to be with the concept of “inheritance” of permissions in Google accounts, where GA4 isn’t recognizing permissions granted at the account or organization level for the purpose of sending out insights. Currently, GA4 seems to require explicit property-level permissions for users to receive alerts or insights, which contradicts the straightforward concept of permission “inheritance”. This could be an overlooked detail on Google’s part, a bug, or simply a matter of unclear documentation. You’ve done well by figuring out a workaround, but it’s good to share these concerns with the Google support team or via their product forums, as they may be unaware of this issue or confusion. Your feedback can help improve the experience for all Google Analytics users.
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I completely understand your concern. The behavior you’ve described does indeed seem strange, especially given the wording on the Insights creation page. While ensuring every team member has the “Viewer” permission at property level might work, it’s not the most scalable solution. The symptoms do point towards ‘inheritance’ permissions possibly not working as intended for Insights. In this case, contacting Google’s support team to report what you’ve found might be the best course of action. This could be a case of an oversight in Google’s systems or simply a lack of clarity in their instructions. Either way, getting clarification directly from the source should provide the correct course of action.
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