Tableau’s nested project feature has been there since v10.5, however I only start to see more people to use it after v2020.1’s new lock permission feature – allowing permissions being locked independently at any nested project. This blog focuses on nested project features and next blog will talk about how lock works with nested project.

This blog will extend previous blog Project (3/10) : Project Leader/owner and their site role to nested projects.

Who can create nested project?

• Only admins can create top level project (I am going to write a new blog to show you how to break this rule to allow all publishers be able to self-serve creating new top level project). Of course, admins can also create nested projects
• In additional to the admins, the main reason to have nested project is to provide more self-service so each project owner or project leader can project nested projects. Of course, a project leader/owner can only create nested project within the project he/she is owner/leader of
• Whoever created the project becomes the owner of the project – this role is still true for creating nested project.

Example of how nested project works?

Let’s say a top level project Finance has one owner (John) and two leaders (Sherry and Mark). All of them can create as many nested projects within Finance. Sherry created nested project Finance – GL, Mark created nested project Finance – AP. Who is the owner/leader for Finance – GL and Finance – AP?

• Finance – GL: Owner is Sherry. Inherited project leaders are John and Mark
• Finance – AP: Owner is Mark. Inherited project leaders are John and Sherry

How the nested project permission works if it is moved to another top level project?

It is a little bit hard to understand how it works but I think that it is well designed to avoid more confusions. Here is how it works. Let me still use the above example

For Finance – GL: Owner is Sherry. Inherited project leaders are John and Mark. Let’s see Ivy was also added as project leader since Ivy is responsible for GL area. Now this Finance – GL nested project is moved from Finance to General Ledge top level project.

Finance – GL under General Ledge:

• Owner for Finance – GL remains unchanged still Sherry.
• Project leader Ivy is still the project leader (no change)
• However the initial inherited project leaders (John and Mark) are not project leaders for this Finance – GL anymore
• The owner and project leaders of General Ledge now become the new inherited project projects for Finance – GL
• All existing content permissions within Finance – GL remains unchanged no matter Finance – GL is customizable or locked unless General Ledge is locked and has the flag to apply locking to all its sub-project permissions.

What are the setup to publish the nested project permissions?

Re-Cap:

1. Use nested project to organize your content
2. Project owner and leader can create nested project
3. There is no limit of how many nested project within one project
4. There is no limit of how many nested level although more than 3 levels can be hard to manage
5. Be aware of additional setup to publish to a nested project – the publisher has to have ‘View’ permission to all its parent level projects