Tableau File Management, Naming and Version Control

Naming schema to be used with Tableau files and to assist with version control.

File Management

College Tableau project files will be stored on \\ad.uillinois.edu\vetmed\Depts\Admin\Tableau.  Access is restricted.  Tableau Desktop files are created and saved as .twb files initially.  Projects under development will be stored in the Local - Dev folder.  Started templates will also be stored there.  Once they are ready to be published to Tableau Server, they will be moved to the Published folders, depending on whether they were published to Tableau Test or Tableau Prod.  When a version is overwritten, the old version should be moved to the _Archive folder.

To determine the development status of a current report, first look in the Published - Prod folder to see which version is deployed.  Then see if a newer version is in Published - Test or Local - Dev folders.  With this method you can determine if a new version is in development already and collaborate with team members on that in-process version before creating your own.

Naming Schema

File naming should follow this pattern:  Department_SourceEnvironment_ShortDescription_SheetName versionnumber

So as an example:  VTH_Test_Reports_AR v1.1

1. Department = VTH
2. Deployment status = Test version not yet deployed to production
3. Short Description = Reports
4. SheetName = AR
5. Version = v1.1 

Long descriptions will be used in the Tableau publishing description field.

Definitions/Examples

1. Department examples:  VTH, CVM, VDL, ASA, IT
2. Deployment examples:  Dev, Test, Prod.  New version of a report should progress from Dev (local file only), Test (deployed to Tableau test server) and Prod (deployed to Tableau prod server)
3. Short Description:  AR, Performance, Financials, WHD, Safety Incidents.  Example of “reports” above is a little generic I think.
4. Sheet Name:  Would only be used when only a single sheet or dashboard is published from a .twb file with many sheets and dashboards that are intended to be published individually.  For example, Mark’s original .twb is a sort of omnibus of reports that you may choose to publish as individual sheets with their own unique URL or can publish all together the way he did.
5. Version:  Start at 1.0.  Increment in 0.1 increments for small changes like changing the service account used in the query, renaming a few fields.  Go in whole number increments for more significant changes.  Including the version in the name will require updating the workbook name on Tableau server after the overwrite version is published.  

Note:  Originally whether the Tableau report pointed to the Test or Prod database was included in the naming convention.  It was determined that generally Tableau files in development or testing will generally still source data from the production database source so that convention was dropped.  A warning though; files in the archive may have used this convention and may be pulling data from the test database, so if making a new version from an archive .twb source, review the sources.