Understand and Manage Objective Visibility Settings in 15Five

Learn how visibility settings determine who can view your objectives and key results in 15Five. This article explains each visibility option and how admins can control privacy settings. 

Visibility options for objectives

As you create or edit an OKR, you will be asked to select a privacy setting: Public, 15Five permissions, or Specific-people.

• Public: The objective and key results will be visible to everyone in your company.
• 15Five permissions: Visible to anyone who can view your Check-ins (including global viewers). To find out who can view your Check-ins, use this link.
• Specific people: The objective and key results will be visible to the objective owner, their manager, and any other groups and/or individuals that are specified. The objective will not be visible to global viewers unless they are added as one of the specific people.

Help Center article 💡: Roles and permissions in 15Five

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: Why don't I see all visibility options?

A: Account admins can restrict what kinds of objectives people can create in Objectives feature settings:

If you don't see the ability to assign public, 15Five permissions, and/or Specific-people visibility to an objective, this is the reason. Please reach out to one of your Account admins if you'd like this setting changed.

Q: If I want to align my objective with a parent objective, what visibility rules apply? 

A: If your objective is aligned with a parent objective, it does not have to match the parent objective’s visibility settings. You can choose the visibility independently (Public, 15Five permissions, or Specific people).

Users will only see aligned objectives if they have permission to view them. If someone can view the parent objective but does not have access to one or more aligned child objectives, they will see an indicator showing the number of hidden aligned objectives instead of the objective details. Learn more about aligned objectives. 
 

Q: Can I apply different visibility for key results? 

A: No. Visibility can only be set at the objective level, meaning that all key results will have the same visibility settings. 

Q: I only want myself and my direct manager to have visibility into my objective. How do I set this up?

A: If you'd like for the objective to be private to only you and your direct manager, select "Specific people." Your name and your direct manager's name will be auto-populated; simply don't add anyone else's name in the field.

Q: I don't want people to be able to create private objectives. How do I set this up?

A: If you're an Account admin and only want people to be able to create public objectives, you can set this up in Objectives feature settings. Simply navigate to the "Permissions" tab and set the "Select objective privacy settings" option to "Public."

Please note that this setting will not apply retroactively. Private objectives that were created before changing this setting will retain their original visibility setting.

Q: What is a Global Objective Viewer and how does it affect objective visibility?

A: A Global Objective Viewer is a user designated in Objectives feature settings who can view all objectives in the organization, regardless of the objective’s visibility settings. This includes objectives set to Public, 15Five permissions, or Specific people, as well as aligned child objectives that would normally be hidden due to visibility restrictions.

Global Objective Viewers are granted view access only. They cannot edit objectives unless they are the objective owner or otherwise have edit permissions. They automatically have visibility to all existing and newly created objectives, even if they are not explicitly added to the objective’s visibility settings.

Admins can configure Global Objective Viewers in Objectives feature settings by selecting the users who should have global visibility to objectives.