Tableau Server on Windows Help

Permissions determine how users can interact with content such as workbooks and data sources. Permissions are set in the permission dialog or via the REST API(Link opens in a new window). At the top of the dialog, permission rules configure capabilities for groups or users. Below, the permissions grid displays the effective permissions for users.

There are several interrelated topics that discuss how to think about, set, and manage permissions. The main topics are:

• This topic, which covers the fundamentals, how to set permission rules for projects and other content, and permission considerations for specific scenarios.
• Permission Capabilities and Templates, which covers in detail the various capabilities that are used to build permission rules.
• Manage Permissions with Projects, which covers using projects to manage permissions and how nested and locked projects impact permissions.
• Effective permissions, which covers how permission rules are evaluated and how final permissions are determined.
• Permissions, Site Roles, and Licenses, which covers how permissions interact with site roles and licenses to determine what a user can do on a site.

Additionally, if Data Management is licensed, permissions for external assets have additional considerations. For more information, see Manage Permissions for External Assets.

Permissions fundamentals

Projects and groups

Tableau sites use projects to organize content and groups to organize users. Managing permissions is easier when permission rules are:

• Set at the project level instead of on individual pieces of content.
• Established for groups instead of individuals.

Permissions can only be established for users, groups, projects, or assets that already exist. For more information about creating users and groups, creating projects, and publishing content, see Manage Users and Groups, Use Projects to Manage Content Access , and Publish Data Sources and Workbooks(Link opens in a new window).

Capabilities and permission rules 

Permissions are made up of capabilities—the ability to perform actions like view content, web edit, download data sources, or delete content. Permission rules establish what capabilities are allowed or denied for a user or group on an asset.

For more information about capabilities and permission rule templates, see Permission Capabilities and Templates.

Note: When talking about permissions in general, it’s common to see a phrase like "a user must have the delete permission." This is easy to understand in a broad context. However, when working with permissions at a technical level like in this article, it’s more accurate to say "the delete capability." In this topic we’ll use the more precise term capability, but you should be aware that you might see permission in other places.

For a breakdown of the capability icons and their meanings, see Permission Capabilities and Templates.

The interplay between license level, site role, and potentially multiple permission rules factor into the final determination of what a user can or can’t do. For each user this becomes their effective permissions. For more information, see Effective permissions.Some tasks such as creating new workbooks from a browser (web authoring) or moving content might require specific configurations of several capabilities rather than being captured in a single capability. For more information, see Permission settings for specific scenarios.

Set permissions

Permission rules are set differently at the project level, at the content level, or when publishing content from Tableau Desktop.

Note: The phrase "project permissions" can have two meanings. There are the permission capabilities for a project itself—View and Publish—that control how a user can interact with a project. There is also the concept of project-level permission rules for other content types. In this article “project-level permissions” means permission rules for workbooks, data sources, and the other assets that are configured in the permission dialog for a project. This is in contrast to “content-level” permission rules that can be set on a specific workbook, data source, etc.

Clean up the All Users group

By default, all users are added to an "All Users" group that has basic permissions for content. To start with a clean slate when building your own permission rules, we recommend that you delete the rule entirely or edit the rule for All Users to remove any permissions (set the permission role template to None). This helps prevent any ambiguity down the road by reducing the number of rules that applies to any given user and therefore making effective permissions easier to understand.

Permission settings for specific scenarios

Certain actions require combinations of permission capabilities and possibly site roles. The following are some common scenarios and their necessary permission configurations

Saving, publishing, and overwriting

In the context of permissions, saving is essentially publishing. As such, the Overwrite and Save a Copy capabilities can only be given to users with a site role that allows publishing: Administrator, Creator, or Explorer (can publish). Explorer or Viewer site roles can’t publish, overwrite, or save a copy.

• The Publish capability for a project allows a user to publish content into that project.
• The Overwrite capability allows a user to save over an existing piece of content. By saving over the content, the user becomes the owner of that content. The Overwrite capability also allows users to edit minor aspects of existing pieces of content, such as the description for a metric or the synonyms for a data role. Editing the existing content in this way doesn't change the owner of the content.
• The Save a Copy capability allows a user to save a new copy of the content. This is usually done in conjunction with web authoring and means the user can save their modifications.

It’s important to note that users aren’t able to Save or Save As a piece of content unless they’ve the Publish capability for at least one project, because all content must be published into a project. Without the Publish capability at the project level, the content can’t be published.

In web editing, the Save option in the File menu only appears to the content owner. If a user who isn’t the owner has the Overwrite capability (allowing them to save the content), they must use File > Save As and name the workbook the exact same name. This prompts a warning that they’re about to overwrite the existing content, which they can do. Conversely, a user with only the Save a Copy capability trying to use the same name gets an error stating they don’t have permission to overwrite the existing content.

If a user who isn’t the content owner overwrites content, they become the owner, with all the permissions that entails. The original owner’s access to the content is then determined by their permissions as a user rather than the owner.

Note: Download Workbook/Save a Copy is a joint capability for workbooks. Explorers can be given this capability but they’re only able to download the workbook, not save a copy. Giving the capability to Explorer (can publish), Creator, or Administrator site roles gives them both the ability to download workbooks and save a copy.

Web Editing and Web Authoring

Web editing and web authoring allows users to edit or create workbooks directly in the browser.

The permission capability is called Web Edit and the site setting is called Web Authoring. This section refers to any web-based editing or publishing action as web authoring.

To enable this functionality, there are several requirements.

• Site setting: Web authoring must be turned on for the entire Tableau site. See Set a Site's Web Authoring Access. Without this setting enabled, no users can create workbooks or edit existing workbooks from the browser, even if they have the web edit capability.
• User site role: The user must have the appropriate site role.
  • Viewers can never web edit.
  • Explorers can be given the web edit capability but can’t publish. Essentially, they can use web editing to answer deeper questions based on existing content on the fly, but can’t save their edits.
  • Explorers (can publish) or Site Administrator Explorers can publish, but they can only use data that is already published to the site.
  • Creators, Site Administrator Creators, and Server Administrators can publish and create data sources.
• Permission capabilities: The user must have the necessary permission capabilities based on the desired functionality.

Required Permission Capability Settings

Desired functionality	Minimum Site Role	Web Edit	Download/ Save a Copy	Overwrite (workbook)	Publish (project)	Connect (data source)
Web author without being able to save	Explorer	Allow	Deny	Deny	Optional	Allow
Web author and save as new content	Explorer (can publish)	Allow	Allow	Deny	Allow	Allow
Web author and save (overwrite) content	Explorer (can publish)	Allow	Allow	Allow	Allow	Allow
Web author with new data and save new content	Creator	Allow	Optional	Optional	Allow	Optional

Optional indicates this capability isn’t involved in the desired functionality

Data access for published Tableau data sources

Data sources published to a Tableau site can have native authentication as well as permissions within the Tableau environment.

When the data source is published to the Tableau site, the publisher can choose how to Set Credentials for Accessing Your Published Data, which addresses how data source credentials are handled (such as requiring users to log into a database or enter their credentials for Google Sheets). This authentication is controlled by whatever technology holds the data. This can be embedded when the data source is published, or the data source publisher can choose to prompt the user for their credentials to the data source. For more information, see Publish a Data Source.

There are also data source capabilities that allow or deny users the ability to see (View) and connect to the published data source (Connect) in the context of Tableau. These capabilities are set like any other permissions in Tableau.

When a workbook is published that uses a published data source, the author can control how the Tableau authentication behaves for someone consuming the workbook. The author sets the workbook’s access to the published data source, either as Embed password (using the author’s Connect access to the data source) or Prompt users (using the Connect access of the person viewing the workbook), which may require data source authentication as well.

• When the workbook is set to Embed password, anyone who looks at the workbook sees the data based on the author’s access to the data source.
• If the workbook is set to Prompt users, the Tableau-controlled access is checked for the data source. The person consuming the workbook must have the Connect capability for the published data source to see the data. If the published data source is also set to Prompt user, the viewer must also enter their credentials for the data source itself.

Note that this applies to consuming a workbook, not web editing. To web edit, the user must have their own Connect capability.

For information on embedding passwords when you publish Tableau content such as a data source or workbook that uses a virtual connection, see Virtual connections(Link opens in a new window) in the Tableau Server help.

Move content

To move an item, open its Action menu (...) and click Move. Select the new project for the item, then click Move Assets. If Move is unavailable or there are no available destination projects, verify the appropriate conditions are met:

• Administrators can always move assets and projects to any location.
• Project leaders and project owners can move assets and nested projects among their projects.
  • Note that non-administrators can’t move projects to become top-level projects
• Other users can move assets only if all three of the following requirements are met:
  • Creator or Explorer (Can Publish) site role.
  • Publishing rights (View and Publish capabilities) for the destination project
  • Owner of the content, or—for workbooks and flows—having the Move capability.

When moving a database with its tables, the user must have the Move capability for both the database and its tables.

For information about how permissions are handled when moving content and projects, see Move projects and content.

Metrics

Metrics are created from views in published workbooks. Users can create metrics if they:

• Are a Creator or Explorer (can publish) site role
• Have the Publish capability on a project
• Have the Create/Refresh Metric capability for the relevant workbook

For more information, see Create and Troubleshoot Metrics (Retired) and Set Up for Metrics.

Note: Prior to 2021.3, the ability to create a metric on a view was controlled by the Download Full Data capability.

Because metrics are independent assets, it’s important to note that the permissions for metrics are managed independently from the view they were created from. (This is unlike data-driven alerts and subscriptions, where the content of the alert or subscription can only be seen if the user has the correct permissions for the view itself.)

Although the capabilities for metrics are straightforward, the View capability should be considered carefully. It may be possible for a workbook with restricted permissions to be the basis for a metric with more open permissions. To protect sensitive data, you might want to deny metric creation for specific workbooks.

Metrics display data from their owner’s perspective

When you create a metric, you capture your perspective of the data from that view. This means that any users who can access your metric will see the data as it appears to you. If the data in the view is filtered based on your credentials, the data you see might be different from what other users see when they access the same view. Limit the View capability for your metric if you're concerned about exposing your perspective of the data.

Explain Data

When Explain Data is available, a user can select a mark in a view and click Run Explain Data in the mark’s Tooltip menu. A combination of settings must be enabled to make Explain Data available in editing mode and viewing mode.

Requirements for authors to run Explain Data or edit Explain Data settings in editing mode:

• Site setting: Availability of Explain Data set to Enable. Enabled by default.
• Site role: Creator, Explorer (can publish)
• Permissions: Run Explain Data capability set to Allowed. Unspecified by default. If you open a workbook (Tableau version 2022.1 or earlier) that used this permission in Tableau version 2022.2 or later, you must reset the Run Explain Data capability to Allowed.

Note: The Download Full Data capability for a Creator or Explorer (can publish) controls whether they see the View Full Data option in Extreme Values explanations. Viewers are always denied the Download Full Data capability. However, all users can see record-level details when the Extreme Values explanation type is enabled in Explain Data settings.

Requirements for all users to run Explain Data in viewing mode:

• Site setting: Availability of Explain Data set to Enable. Enabled by default.
• Site role: Creator, Explorer, or Viewer
• Permissions: Run Explain Data capability set to Allowed. Unspecified by default. If you open a workbook (Tableau version 2022.1 or earlier) that used this permission in Tableau version 2022.2 or later, you’ll need to reset the Run Explain Data capability to Allowed.

Show or Hide Sheet Tabs

In the context of published content, sheet tabs (also referred to as tabbed views) is a distinct concept from sheet tabs in Tableau Desktop. Showing and hiding sheet tabs in Tableau Desktop refers to hiding sheets in the authoring environment. For more information, see Manage Sheets in Dashboards and Stories.

Showing and hiding sheet tabs (turning tabbed views on or off) for published content refers to navigation in a published workbook. When sheet tabs are shown, published content has navigational sheet tabs along the top of each view.

This setting also impacts how permissions function and may have security implications (see note).

Note: It’s possible to have the View capability for a view without the View capability for the workbook or project that contain it. Normally if a user lacks the View capability for a project and workbook, they wouldn’t know those assets exist. If they have the View capability for a view, however, a user may be able to see the project and workbook name when looking at the view, such as in the navigational breadcrumb. This is expected and accepted behavior.

Turn off tabbed views to allow independent view permissions

Although it isn’t recommended as a general practice, there are times when it can be useful to set permissions on views independently of the workbook that contains them. To do so, three conditions must be met:

1. The workbook must be published—there’s no way to set view permissions during publishing.
2. The workbook must be in a customizable project.
3. The workbook can’t show sheets as tabs (tabbed views must be hidden).

When a workbook shows sheets as tabs, all views inherit the workbook permissions and any changes to the workbook permissions affect all of its views. When a workbook in a customizable project doesn’t show tabbed views, all views assume the workbook permissions upon publication, but any subsequent changes to the workbook’s permission rules won’t be inherited by the views.

Changing the configuration of sheets as tabs on a published workbook will also impact the permission model. Show Tabs overrides any existing view-level permissions and reinstate the workbook-level permissions for all views. Hide Tabs breaks the relationship between the workbook and its views.

• To configure sheets as tabs on a published workbook, open the Actions menu (...) for the workbook and select Tabbed Views. Choose Show Tabs or Hide Tabs as desired.
• To configure sheets as tabs during publishing, refer to Show sheets as tabs(Link opens in a new window).
• To set view-level permissions, see Set permissions on assets.

Important: In a customizable project, any modifications to the workbook-level permissions won’t be applied if navigational sheet tabs are hidden (aka tabbed views are off). Changes to permissions must be made on individual views.

Collections

For information on managing permissions in Collections, refer to Collections.

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