A dashed box with a lock icon in place of a field means your role doesn't include permission to see that data. The information may well exist — Owneli shows you a lock precisely so you can't mistake "hidden from you" for "nothing recorded".
What does the locked placeholder mean?
Client data is split into separately-permissioned slices. A role can see the client list without any of these:
| Slice | Examples |
|---|---|
| Contact details | Email, phone, date of birth, address |
| Clinical fields | Allergies, internal clinical notes |
| Financials | Lifetime spend, sale amounts |
| Photos | The before/after gallery |
| PHI form answers | Submissions marked as containing health information |
Whichever slices your role lacks render as the locked placeholder wherever they'd appear — the profile, search results, lists.
Hidden is never "none"
This is the rule that matters clinically: a masked field must never be read as empty.
"No allergies recorded" is a clinical assertion — someone checked and found none. A lock is a different statement: the record may hold allergies you are not permitted to see. Owneli will never show you "none recorded" for a field it is hiding from you.
Knock-on effects you'll notice
- Search: without contact-details access, searching clients by email or phone finds nothing — search by name instead. See Search everything.
- Directory columns: the lifetime-spend column disappears without financial access.
- Submissions: PHI answers appear masked, with an audited Reveal if your role can open submissions. See Review a submitted form.
Getting access
Permissions are capabilities attached to roles, not fixed job titles — an admin can grant exactly the slice your work needs in Settings, without making you an admin. See Roles and permissions.
Common questions
Is the field hidden or just empty?
If you can see the field's normal empty state ("Add allergies…"), it's empty. If you see the dashed lock placeholder, it's hidden — and its real contents are unknown to you.
Who decides what I can see?
Your role's capability grants, set by an admin or the owner. The same role applies everywhere in the app, so a field hidden on the profile is also hidden in search and lists.
Does revealing masked form answers get reported?
Yes — each reveal writes an audit-trail entry with your name, the model being accountability rather than a hard block.