Tableau - Manage your project and permissions on your own

This article is for the Pro Tableau project publishers interested in managing project contents and access permissions on their own. In other words, delegating project administration to the project owners. This requires knowledge of Tableau security and how it works in the context of a project administrator on the server.

Managing Tableau projects and permissions comes with responsibility. A mistake in setting permissions can result in exposure of sensitive data to the public. We strongly suggest that if you have any question or doubt, contact the Tableau Administrators for guidance. Also, we warn you not to use individual accounts as that could complicate matters when a person leaves their job. As a best practice, we suggest using AD groups for the sub-project or workbook level permissions, and not individual NetID accounts. If the AD group is not currently in the Tableau Server, you can send a request to the Tableau Administrators to have it added or include in the new/modify Tableau Project request.

Please review the following before you requesting Project Owner or Project Leader permissions for a project.

  • What are Project Owner and Project Leader

The project owner is always one individual user. By default, the user who creates a project is its owner. The project owner has administrative access to the project and content in it—including making someone else the owner and assigning Project Leader permissions.

The project leader setting provides a way to allow multiple users administrative access to a project, its child projects, and all workbooks and data sources in those projects.

A project leader does not have to be a project owner or administrator. In addition to server and site administrators, the full scope of Project Leader permissions is available to users with a Creator or Explorer (can publish) site role.

  • How to request Project Leader for your project:

We recommend you create an AD security group, add members (even if just one member) and  provide AD group name in the request stating Project Leader with project name (new or existing).

  • Here are the actions you are allowed with either Project Owner or Project Leader permission for the project as per the Tableau community article:

1. Change extract refresh schedule Note: The Project Leader cannot refresh the data until they have assumed ownership of the workbook or data source.

2. Modify any workbooks (web edit or re-publish)

3. Change workbook owner

4. Change data source owner

5. Change data source user/password

6. Delete workbooks

7. Change workbook or data source permissions

8. Move workbook from one project to another if the user is project leader for both source and target projects.

9. Lock or unlock project permission

10. Certify or certified data sources (10.4 and above)

11. Create or delete sub project folder(10.5 and above)

  • There are various resources available on Tableau and on the web. Here are couple articles and videos we recommend to visit as a reference.

https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/projects.htm#project-ownership-and-project-leader-access-in-project-hierarchies

https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/permissions.htm

This Youtube video below provides high level project permission locked/unlocked and nested permission from the root level to customizable permission underneath.

This video explains detail contents permission for the project administrator which you can say who has Project leader or Project Owner permission.