Workspace Admin 101
We'll cover how workspace Admins like yourself can add users, streamline access to Hex with user roles, create shared workspace assets such as data connections and Secrets, and integrate with GitHub through the Settings panel.
1. Navigate to the Settings panel
Access your Hex account at app.hex.tech. From your workspace's Projects home page, select Settings at the bottom left of the side panel to open the Settings panel. As a workspace Admin, you have access to more settings than non-Admins such as new user and group creation, shared asset management, and security settings.
2. Set up domain-based workspace access
The easiest way to enable access to your organization's Hex workspace is to set up allowed email domains. This enables anyone that has an email address with a certain domain to log in without the need for you to manually create a user account for that person.
To add a new email domain, go to the Settings → Users tab under the "Access & Security" header, and the Allowed email domains section.
Add in your organization's domain (e.g. coolcorp.com) and set a default role for folks who log in through this method. We recommend using either "Editor" or "Viewer" as the default role.
Read more about different user roles in the docs.
3. Set up Data connections and Secrets
Data connections are secure configurations to your data sources. Once you set up a data connection in the Settings panel, it will by default be accessible to all workspace users, excluding Guests, as a project's Data Sources option. This is much more efficient than having to manually add that data connection to each project individually! You can configure more specific permissions for each connection by customizing the groups of users which should have access. Learn more about workspace asset permissions here.
Hex supports several types of data sources including Snowflake, BigQuery, & Redshift!
To set up a data connection, select the Data sources tab in the Settings panel, under "Workspace". Fill in the relevant connection details and make sure that you've allowlisted Hex's IPs if required. Once you create or update the connection, we run the credentials to make sure it's valid (otherwise, you'll get an error in the creation dialog).
If you're working with sensitive values like API tokens or passwords, you should consider setting up Secrets here as well. All Secrets are stored in a highly-encrypted vault, and are only accessible to the users you have specificed (defaults to all workspace users, excluding Guests). Learn more about workspace asset permissions here.
To create a shared Secret, navigate to the Secrets tab, select the + Secret button and add a name and value for the Secret.
Both Data connections and Secrets can also be added at the project level for more restricted needs.
4. Establish User Roles
You can add users directly through the Administration panel or users may be added through individual projects.
For each user you add, Hex supports four different levels of user roles to ensure people from your organization have the correct amount of access to the workspace and projects: Admin (that's you!), Editor, Viewer, and Guest.
Users who will need to create or edit Hex projects should be designated as Editors, while anyone who will only need to view or interact with your team’s projects should be Viewers.
5. Integrate with GitHub
Your team may have custom or external packages that you want to use within Hex projects. Hex supports an integration with GitHub so once you have successfully connected a repository to Hex, they will be available to all workspace users.
Check out the docs for more information on using these packages within a project
Start by connecting a GitHub account to Hex. Navigate to the Integrations tab within the Settings panel (under "Workspace") and click the Connect button under the GitHub packages section. You can choose individual repositories from the account or connect all repositories.
6. Organize content
Hex includes two types of tags that can be used to organize and manage projects: categories and statuses. By default, Hex includes some general categories and statuses, but you are free to edit those defaults and add additional ones.
See the docs for more details on the default tags.
Statuses are managed in the General tab within the Settings panel. Try adding a status called "In Review". When you navigate back to the workspace Projects home, you should see this status as a way to filter projects.
We recommend setting up collections to further organize your workspace's projects. Collections are groups of projects (and components) that can be shared with individual users and groups, or with the entire workspace. Note that the power to create collections is not restricted only to Admins - Editors can also create and share them.
Summary
Congratulations on reaching the end of this tutorial! You have now set up critical shared workspace assets like data connections for your workspace, set up controlled access for your teammates and collaborators, and are on your way to becoming a Hex expert!
If you're curious to try out more, you can explore other administrative settings such as setting up Single Sign-On (SSO) for authentication and establishing Groups to streamline access to Hex projects.