need to share underlying reports when sharing a dashboard

[Casey12]

I have a dashboard that consists of several underlying reports.  I have shared this dashboard (view, not edit) with a long list of users.  (Yes, I know it would be better to share via a group / role, but I don't have that capability currently.)  Of the users who have responded thus far, they can all view the dashboard, but each widget / report is throwing the following message:

Report visible only to a specific user or group

How can I resolve this?  One person told me that I need to share all of the underlying reports as well.  However, that doesn't seem right.  One, I have successfully shared other dashboards without having to share the underlying reports.  So, it must be something like an ACL on the tables that the reports point to.  (Though, if it was, then I would expect to see a message like "security constraints have removed x rows".)  Two, if I share the reports, because reports don't differentiate between a developer and a consumer, then those who view the reports can also modify them, which I do not want.  Three, it was already tedious enough to share the dashboard with a laundry list of users.  I don't want to have to go through that for all reports as well.

[Adam Stout]

That is correct.  You need to share the reports with the desired users.  Typically, it is recommended that you share reports and dashboards with groups (or role) so you don't have to touch all of them to add or remove a user.

[Casey12]

How can it be, then, that some of my users are able to see certain dashboards without me also sharing the underlying reports?

[Adam Stout · Accepted solution]

Performance Analytics widgets do not require extra sharing, but reports do.  If the users have report_admin or some other elevated permission, it could be letting them view it, but for a normal user, you have to have permission to view the report itself in addition to rights for viewing the dashboard.

[royvanveghel]

Probably these users also have report_group rights, reports are also visible on a dashboard based on access via the sys_report table, the out of the box read ACL will give these uer rights to read the report and thus they will see it on the dashboard. We also observed this and we used this option in a way so that reports on a dashboard don´t need to be shared anymore specific.