My previous blog PROJECT (2/10) : Project Leader’s permission details out all activities can be done by project leader or owner assuming that project leader/owner have the creator or explorer (can publish) site roles. Site role is another very confusing but important Tableau concern.

Project leader/owner vs site role

• Site role defines the maximum level of access a user can have on the site.
• Project leader/owner is not site role but permission.
• Site role, along with content permissions, determines who can publish, interact with, or only view published content, or who can manage the site’s users and administer the site itself.
• Read more site role https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/users_site_roles.htm

What is minimum site role project owner must have?

• Short answer is creator or explorer (can publish).
• You can’t assign a user as project owner if the user site role is Explorer or View. An user has to have creator or explorer (can publish) or admin site role in order to become a project owner
• What happens a project owner’s site role was changed from creator to view?
  • First of all, when user’s site role is downgraded, Tableau server never checks what permissions of this user has before.
  • Although you can’t assign site role viewer user as a project owner, however if this user site role is changed from creator to viewer, this user still remains as project owner – that is not changed
  • The implication is that this non-publish site role project owner can’t handle any of the project owner activities any more except content access permissions:
    • Can’t manage permissions for others anymore
    • Can’t create new subproject
    • Can’t move content
    • Can’t change owner
    • Can’t add or change project leader
    • Can’t delete the project
    • Can’t rename the project
    • ….

What is minimum site role project leader must have?

• Short answer is viewer. Yes, you can assign viewer or explorer users as project leader. However viewer or explorer users can’t do any of the followings even they are project leaders
  • Can’t manage permissions for others anymore
  • Can’t create new subproject
  • Can’t move content
  • Can’t add or change project leader
  • ….

Read next blog PROJECT (4/10) : Sub-project or nested project

My previous blog Project (1/10) : Differences between Project Leader and owner talked about differences between project leader and project owner. This blog details out the permission details that project leader has.

Before dive into details what project leaders are allowed to do, remember this golden rule – project leader and owner got all the permissions.

Project leaders and project owner have the followings permissions for all content (workbook, data source, flow, metrics) published within the project) :

1. Add or change extract refresh frequency
   • Project leader/owner can’t add or change overall server schedule (for example, can’t add hourly refresh schedule if it does not exist) but change refresh frequency (from example, from daily refresh 6:00am to 7:00am or to weekly frequency)
2. Change workbook (same for data source, flow, metrics) owner
   • When workbook owner changes team or leaves company, project leader/owner are supposed to change the workbook owner to someone else in the team
   • If workbook has embedded credential, the embedded credential will be deleted after owner change that will cause extract failure, etc. You will need to re-embed your database credential.
   • Sometimes the workbook owner change can be two step process: Change to yourself as project leader, then change the other user.
3.   Change embedded data source user/password
4.   Modify any workbooks (web edit or using Desktop)
   • This can be super useful when workbook owner is on vacation or not available but you have urgent need to update the workbooks
   • It is two-step process when you overwrite someone else’s workbook even you have the permission to do so:
     • The ‘Save’ button will grey out so you will have to click ‘Save As’
     • Click ‘Save As’, then type exact the same workbook same as what it was
     • Pop up warning if you want to overwrite, click Yes
     • Then ‘Save’ button will show, click ‘Save’ to overwrite
5.   Delete workbooks
   • Yes. Project leader/owner can delete any workbooks in the project. This is very handy when there is a need to clean up things.
   • Self-service comes with accountability. Mistake can be made here to delete actively used workbooks
   • Tableau server will not warn you during deletion even the workbook is actively used.
6.  Change workbook or data source or flow permissions
7.  Move workbook
   • When move workbook from project A to B, you need to be project leader for both project A and B
8.  Restore old revision 
9.  Lock or unlock project permission
   • There is no Undo for this action
   • When lock project permission from ‘Customizable’, all existing permissions will be lost and all workbook permissions will be changed to project level permission. Strongly recommend to take some screenshots before this action as there is no undo.
   • Leverage the option to allow lock the nested project or not, that is the biggest small feature, I will have separate blog to talk about that feature
10.  Certify or uncertified data sources
    • Only project leader/owner can certify or un-certify data source
    • Tableau has no feature associated with certified data source, other filtering during searching
11.  Create or delete sub project folder
    • Project owner can delete project that the user is owner of while project leader can’t delete the project
    • However project leader can delete sub project (aka nested project)
12. Add or remove project leaders
    • It is possible that you add John as project leader, then John just removed you out of project leader role. A lot of trust among project leaders. As best practices, I will recommend to keep max 3 project leaders for any project
13. Change project owner – only project owner has this permission

Pls continue reading next blog Project (3/10) : Project Leader/owner and their site role

Tableau’s project leaders and owner have super powerful built-in privileges. The intent of this project serial is to help project leaders/owner/admins understand and leverage Tableau features better. Everything discussed here applies to both Tableau serve and online unless specified.

• Project Leaders vs owner
• What project leader can do
• Project leader/owner permissions in nested projects
• Locked or customizable project
• Common use cases of locked project
• Publishing to nested project
• How to create ‘Tableau Public’ project within your firewall
• How to create ‘Private’ project for every publisher
• How to automate top level project creation
• How to plan your project structure

Differences between Project Leaders vs Owner

Project owner is an individual users who owns anything and everything about the project.

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

High Level Difference : project owner vs leader vs admins

• Only admins can create top level projects.
• Whoever created the project becomes owner by default after project created
• Strongly recommended admin to change the owner to project requestor after project created
• Project owner can add project leaders

Key differences between leader and owner:

1. Owner is individual user while leader can be user or group
2. Owner can delete top level project while leader can’t
3. Owner can change the owner while leader can’t
4. Owner will receive access request notification for locked project while leader will not

Read next blog: PROJECT (2/10) : Project Leader’s permission