Manage Site User Visibility
By default, all site users can see aliases, project ownership and comments by other users when permissions allow. The User Visibility setting lets administrators manage if users with Viewer and Explorer site roles see other users and groups on the site, which can be important for sites that are used by multiple clients. To learn more about site roles, see Set Users’ Site Roles.
Limit user visibility
Setting User Visibility to Limited impacts certain collaboration tools and hides user information in Tableau Cloud and Tableau Server. Limited User Visibility either disables the feature for Viewers and Explorers (excluding Site Administrator Explorers), or removes user information from other areas. Note that Creators and administrators will still see user information when User Visibility is set to Limited.
To limit user visibility for Explorers and Viewers (excluding Site Administrator Explorers):
- Navigate to the site's Settings page
- Select Limited in the User Visibility setting
The following is a list of site areas impacted when User Visibility is set to Limited. Unless noted that the feature is disabled for all users, only non-administrator Explorers or Viewers are impacted.
| Area | Impact |
| Search | User information not displayed |
| Content owners | User information not displayed (Explorers and Viewers can't see themselves, but can see their content in My Content) |
| Profile pictures | User information not displayed |
| Subscriptions | User information not displayed
|
| Recommendations | Similar users not displayed (all users) |
| Add/Edit Tags | Explorers and Viewers can see tags but cannot delete or modify them |
| "Who has seen this view?" | Disabled |
| Ask Data usage analytics | Disabled |
| Permissions dialogs | Disabled |
| Named sharing | Disabled (all users) |
| Alerts | Disabled (all users) Existing alerts paused |
| Comments | Disabled (all users) |
| Public Custom Views | Disabled (all users) Existing public custom views appear as private |
| Request Access | Disabled (all users) |
| Tableau Desktop | Publishing workbooks disabled from Desktop User information not displayed on user filters |
| Tableau Pulse manage followers | No users appear as followers, and no results appear when searching for users. |
| Tableau Catalog (with Data Management) | User information not displayed |
When User Visibility is set to Limited, Tableau Server REST API and Metdata API calls behave as described in the table above.
Users on a site can interact with views and modify them, such as applying filters. If that user shares their modified view with others, or if the user creates something from that modified view (like a metric or a private custom view), then that user's name appears in the URL. Make sure that the URL for this modified view is only distributed to users who are permitted to see that person's name.
Note: If a user is a member of multiple sites, entering an email on the sign-in page for Tableau Cloud will return the names of all sites that the user is a member of.
Best practices for limiting user visibility
Administrators can also check that user and group information is not visible in these ways:
- Configure permissions to only provide content to appropriate parties. For more information, see Permissions.
- Limited User Visibility hides user identification information from search, but might return content that the user published, including when searching by owner name, if the person searching has viewing permission to that content.
- A user publishing a workbook with a duplicate title in the same project might see a warning that a workbook with that title already exists.
- Apply row-level security when necessary.
- Check that metadata within dashboards does not contain user information.
- Check that calculations accessible to users don't contain user metadata (e.g. user filters).
Restore Full User Visibility
When administrators set User Visibility back to Full, features disabled for all users by Limited User Visibility (such as comments and alerts) remain off. Administrators can re-enable these features through the site's Settings page.
Any previous feature settings are not retained when User Visibility is set to Full, and affected features are not automatically turned on.