Manage a Flow
Once you publish a flow to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, you can manage your flows and make changes to them as necessary. This topic describes the various actions you can take to manage your flows.
Note: The content in this topic applies to both Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud, exceptions are called out specifically.
Managing your flows
Following is a list of actions you can take to manage your flows:
Create flows: Starting in version 2020.4, as a Creator you can create flows directly on the web. From the Home page, click Create > Flow or from the Explore page, click New > Flow. For more information, see Tableau Prep on the Web.
Edit flows: Starting in version 2020.4, as a Creator you can edit flows directly on the web. Navigate to the list of flows, select Actions and click Edit Flow, or open a flow and click the Edit button.
When you edit a flow, your changes are moved to a draft state. When you're finished, publish your flow to commit your changes and create a new version of the flow. For more information, see Autosave and working with drafts.
- Run flows: You can manually run a flow in addition to creating scheduled flow tasks that run at a specific time.
Note: The Data Management is not required to manually run flows, but is required to schedule flows to run.
Navigate to the list of flows, select one or more flows you want to run, select Actions and click Run Now.
Tag: Tags are keywords you can create for flows to help you find, filter and categorise content. Authors can add tags to flows when they publish it. But you can also add tags to any workbook, view, or data source that you are allowed to access and you can delete any tags you have added. You can add a tag to a list of flows.
Navigate to the list of flows, select one or more items you want to tag, select Actions and click Tag. To add a tag to a specific flow you can do it from the list of flows as described above. Open the Flow, from the Overview tab, select Actions, and click Tag.
Change Owner: Administrators and flow owners can change owners but only to themselves.
Permissions: You can set permissions for users and specify if they can perform edit actions like save, download, move to a different project and delete. In addition, you can specify who can view and run the flow.
Download: You can download a flow to view or modify it using Tableau Prep Builder. To download a flow, you need download permissions. You’ll have that by default if you are the owner, but you might need to add it for other users.
Revision History: When you make a change to the flow, and republish it to the same project with the same name, a new version of the flow is created. You can view the revision history by selecting revision history from the actions menu. Flow owners have permissions to restore a previous version of a flow.
Move: You can move flows between projects. To move a flow, users need Move permission. You’ll have that by default for flows you own, but you might need to add it for other users.
Rename: You can rename a flow. To rename a flow, users need the Save permission. You'll have that by default for flows you own, but you might need to add it for other users.
Delete: You can delete a flow. To delete a flow, users need the Delete permission. You’ll have that by default for flows you own, but you might need to add it for other users.
Who can do this
Can do the following tasks across all the sites:
Create flows
- Edit published flows
View a list of all draft flows
- Run flows
Delete flows
Download flows
Change Owner
Change Permissions
Change Project
Add/Remove Tags
Change Description
Change Name
Update Flow Task
Delete Flow Task
Create a Flow Task*
- Version Management*
*Some additional conditions apply to these actions:
To create a flow task:
- A flow schedule must be available. Only Server Administrators can create a schedule.
- The flow must have at least one output step.
- The flow version must be compatible with the Tableau Server version.
Version management:
Revision history must be enabled on the site.
User role is allowed to publish to the project.
Can do the following tasks on flows published to the sites that they are site administrator for:
Create flows
- Edit published flows
View a list of all draft flows
- Run flows
Delete flows
Download flows
Change Owner
Change Permissions
Change Project
Add/Remove Tags
Change Description
Change Name
Update Flow Task
Delete Flow Task
Create a Flow Task*
- Version Management*
Some additional conditions apply to these actions:
To create a flow task:
- A flow schedule must be available. Only Server Administrators can create a schedule.
- The flow must have at least one output step.
- The flow version must be compatible with the Tableau Server version.
Version management:
Revision history must be enabled on the site.
User role is allowed to publish to the project.
Can do the following tasks on flows published to the projects where they have project leader permissions:
Create flows
Edit published flows
- Run Flows
Delete
Download
Change Permissions
Change Project
Add/Remove Tags
Change Description
Change Name
Update Flow Task
Delete Flow Task
Create a Flow Task*
Version Management*
*Some additional conditions apply to these actions:
To create a flow task:
- A flow schedule must be available. Only Server Administrators can create a schedule.
- The flow must have at least one output step.
- The flow version must be compatible with the Tableau Server version.
Version management:
Revision history must be enabled on the site.
User role is allowed to publish to the project.
Can do the following tasks on flows published to the projects that they own:
Create Flows
Edit published flows
- Run Flows
Delete
Download
Change Permissions
Change Project
Add/Remove Tags
Change Description
Change Name
Update Flow Task
Delete Flow Task
Create a Flow Task*
Version Management*
* Some additional conditions apply to these actions:
To create a flow task:
- A flow schedule must be available. Only Server Administrators can create a schedule.
- The flow must have at least one output step.
- The flow version must be compatible with the Tableau Server version.
Version management:
Revision history must be enabled on the site.
User role is allowed to publish to the project.
Can do the following tasks on flows that they own:
Create Flows
Edit Draft (flows they own) and Published Flows
Run flows
- Delete flows
Download flows
Change Owner
Change Permissions
Change Project
Add/Remove Tags
Change Description
Change Name
Update Flow Task
Delete Flow Task
Create a Flow Task*
Version Management*
*Some additional conditions apply to these actions:
To create a flow task:
- A flow schedule must be available. Only Server Administrators can create a schedule.
- The flow must have at least one output step.
- The flow version must be compatible with the Tableau Server version.
Version management:
Revision history must be enabled on the site.
User role is allowed to publish to the project.
Can do the following tasks:
Create Flows
Edit Draft (flows they own) and Published Flows
- Run Flows (with Run flow permissions)
Delete (with delete permissions)
Download (with download or Save as, and read permissions)
- Change Permissions (with Change Permissions)
Change Project (with move permissions, and write permissions on the destination project)
Add/Remove Tags (with read permissions)
Change Description (with Save permissions)
Change Name (with Save permissions)
Update Flow task (with Execute permissions)
Delete Flow Task (with Execute permissions)
Create a Flow Task* (with Execute permissions)
- Version Management* (with view, read, save as, download permissions)
* Some additional conditions apply to these actions:
To create a flow task:
- A flow schedule must be available. Only Server Administrators can create a schedule.
- The flow must have at least one output step.
- The flow version must be compatible with the Tableau Server version.
Version management:
Revision history must be enabled on the site.
User role is allowed to publish to the project.
Can do the following tasks:
Note: Starting in version 2020.4, Explorer licence users can no longer run flows on Tableau Server.
Explorer licence users (with Run flow permissions) can run flows on Tableau Cloud.
Delete (with delete permissions)
Download (with download or Save as, and read permissions)
- Change Permissions (with Change Permissions)
Change Project (with move permissions and write permissions on the destination project)
Add/Remove Tags (with read permissions)
Change Description (with Save permissions)
Change Name (with Save permissions)
Update Flow task (with Execute permissions)
Delete Flow Task (with Execute permissions)
Create a Flow Task* (with Execute permissions)
- Version Management* (with view, read, save as, download permissions)
*Some additional conditions apply to these actions:
To create a flow task:
- A flow schedule must be available. Only Server Administrators can create a schedule.
- The flow must have at least one output step.
- The flow version must be compatible with the Tableau Server version.
Version management:
Revision history must be enabled on the site.
User role is allowed to publish to the project.
Viewers cannot manage flows, they can however view the flow and the different versions of the flow.
For more information about the full capabilities you can set on flows, see Permission capabilities(Link opens in a new window).