Tableau Server on Windows Help

Data is increasing in volume, formats and importance leading to more complex environments. With the rapid pace that data changes, it can be hard to keep track of that data and how it's being used in such complex environments. At the same time, more users need to access more of that data in more places, and it’s difficult for users to find the right data. Ultimately, this causes a lack of trust in the data because people question whether they’re using the right source or if the source is up to date.

Tableau Catalogue integrates features like lineage, impact analysis, data dictionary, data quality warnings and search into your Tableau applications, helping solve these problems differently from a stand-alone catalogue. It focuses on both IT and the end user so that everyone using Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud has more trust in and visibility into the data, while also enabling more discoverability. Tableau Catalogue builds a catalogue out of the Tableau content being used by your organisation, enabling comprehensive functionality like the following:

• Impact analysis and lineage.
  • You can see the workbooks and other Tableau content that depend on particular columns or fields from tables or data sources you manage. When you need to make changes to your data, you can notify the impacted Tableau authors using email.
  • As a workbook author, you can use lineage to trace the fields that your workbook depends on.
  • As a user, when you use a Tableau visualisation, you can see where the data came from that was used to create the view.
• Curation and trust. As a data steward, you can add helpful metadata, like descriptions and certification, so that users find the right data. You can set data quality warnings, view data details on the Data Details pane, certify assets and remove assets from the catalogue.
• Data discovery. In Tableau Desktop or Tableau web authoring, you can use Tableau Catalogue to search for databases, tables, data sources and virtual connections to analyse in Tableau and connect to them from the search results.

Starting in 2019.3, Tableau Catalog is available as part of Data Management for Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud. When the product key is active and enabled, the catalogue features described above are integrated into the product you're using, so you can work with the data where you find it.

How Tableau Catalogue works

Tableau Catalogue discovers and indexes all the content on your site– workbooks, data sources, sheets, virtual connections and flows – to gather metadata about the content. From the metadata, external assets (databases, tables and other objects) are identified. Knowing the relationships between the content and the external assets enables Tableau to display the lineage of the content and external assets. Tableau Catalog also enables users to connect to external assets using Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud.

Users on your site can publish or delete content, can attach data quality warnings or certifications, or do anything else that changes the content or its metadata on the site, and Tableau Catalogue will update its information accordingly.

For information about how you can use Tableau Catalogue to support data governance in your organisation, see Governance in Tableau(Link opens in a new window) in the Tableau Blueprint Help.

Key Tableau Catalogue terms

• Metadata. Information about the data.
• Tableau content. Content created in Tableau such as workbooks, data sources, virtual connections and flows.
• External assets. The metadata about the databases and tables used by Tableau content that's published to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud.

Licence Tableau Catalogue

Tableau Catalog is licensed through Data Management. For information about how Data Management licensing works, see Licence Data Management.

Enable Tableau Catalog

After Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud is licensed with Data Management capabilities, you can enable Tableau Catalog by doing one of the following tasks:

• For Tableau Cloud, no action is necessary. Tableau Catalogue is on by default, configured to use derived permissions and ready to use. For more information about derived permissions, see the Permissions on metadata topic.

• For Tableau Server, the Server admin must first enable the Tableau Metadata API using the tsm maintenance metadata-services command. For more information, see Enable Tableau Catalog.

  After the Metadata API is enabled, Tableau Catalogue is on by default, configured to use derived permissions and ready to use. For more information about derived permissions, see the Permissions on metadata topic.

Features and functionality

To learn more about the features you can use with Tableau Catalogue, see the following Help articles:

Data discovery

• In the Connect pane on Tableau Desktop, under Search for Data select Tableau Server to connect to data using Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud(Link opens in a new window). When Tableau Catalogue is enabled, in addition to searching for published data sources to connect to, you can now search for and connect to the specific databases, tables and objects used by published data sources and workbooks on your Tableau Server or your Tableau Cloud site.
• Search(Link opens in a new window) is expanded to include results based on columns, databases, tables and other objects when Tableau Catalogue is enabled.
• If you author in the web, in addition to published data sources, you can also connect to databases and tables(Link opens in a new window).
• If you use Tableau Prep on the web, you can create new flows based on external assets(Link opens in a new window), such as databases and tables.
• If you connect to Salesforce Data Cloud(Link opens in a new window), you'll see support for native Data Cloud objects built into Tableau Catalogue. Data Lake Objects (DLOs), Data Model Objects (DMOs), and calculated insights appear distinct in search, connect and lineage pages, which makes discovering, connecting to and reusing them simpler.

Curation and trust

• Certify your data assets(Link opens in a new window) to help users find trusted and recommended data.
• Set data quality warnings(Link opens in a new window) to alert users to data quality issues, such as stale or deprecated data.
• Add sensitivity labels(Link opens in a new window) to warn users about data that needs to be handled with care.
• Add custom labels(Link opens in a new window) to classify data in ways that suit the needs of your organisation
• Manage data labels(Link opens in a new window) to extend the label names and categories available to users.
• Categorise items on Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud using tags(Link opens in a new window) to help users filter external assets.
• Better understand published visualisations by using the Data Details(Link opens in a new window) tab to see information about the data used.
• Add descriptions(Link opens in a new window) to databases, tables and columns to help users find the data they're looking for.

Lineage and impact analysis

• Use lineage(Link opens in a new window) to trace the source of your data and to analyse the impact of changes to your data and identify which users might be impacted.
• Email owners(Link opens in a new window) of a workbook, data source or flow about data-related updates. Do the same with database, table or object contacts.

Developer resources

You can use metadata methods in the Tableau REST API to programmatically update certain metadata. For more information about the metadata methods, see Metadata Methods in the Tableau Server REST API.

In addition to the REST API, you can use the Tableau Metadata API(Link opens in a new window) to programmatically query metadata from the content published to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud. The Metadata API is fast and flexible and is best when you are looking to find out specific information about the relationship between metadata and its structures. Explore and test queries against the Metadata API using an interactive in-browser tool called GraphiQL(Link opens in a new window).

Note: Data Management is not required to use the Metadata API or GraphiQL.