Tableau operating model

Overview and diagram view

Synchronizing means refreshing the assets that are currently in Data Catalog as a result of a previous ingestion or synchronization job. After synchronizing Tableau, the assets in Data Catalog accurately reflect the metadata as it exists at the time of synchronization.

Note 
  • The assets have the same names as their counterparts in Tableau.
  • Some asset types are only created if the Tableau user has specific permissions.
  • Relations that were created between Tableau assets and other assets via a relation type in the Tableau operating model, are deleted upon synchronization. The same is true of any attribute types in the operating model that you add to Tableau assets. To ensure that the characteristics you add to Tableau assets are not deleted upon synchronization, be sure to use characteristics that are not part of the Tableau operating model.

The following image shows the relations between Tableau asset types.

You can easily recreate this diagram view in your Collibra environment. See Create a Tableau operating model diagram view.

Harvested metadata per asset type

This table shows the harvested Tableau metadata for each Tableau asset type.

Note 
  • In Tableau, data objects descriptions can be inherited from other data objects. Any such inherited descriptions are not harvested.
  • In Tableau, worksheets and dashboards can be hidden, restricting visibility to admins only. During Tableau synchronization, hidden worksheets and dashboards are retrieved through the Tableau APIs. However, the path to these data objects within Tableau is not provided. As a result:

    • The "URL" attribute on the asset pages of Tableau Dashboard and Tableau Worksheet assets is empty.
    • The "Visible on server" attribute is set to "false".

    Important Although this section focuses on hidden worksheets and dashboards, the exact same behavior is observed if the worksheets are deleted in Tableau. On the other hand, if a dashboard or story is deleted in Tableau, all contained worksheets are completely deleted in Tableau, and the status of the corresponding assets in Collibra changes to "Missing from source".

Asset type

Synchronized metadata

Public ID

Tableau Server

Public ID: TableauServer

Description

Description
Server hosts / is hosted in Business Dimension ServerHostsBusinessDimension
URL: The link to the data in Tableau Url

Tableau Site

Public ID: TableauSite

Description Description

BI Folder assembles / Is assembled in BI Folder

BIFolderAssemblesBIFolder
Server hosts / is hosted in Business Dimension ServerHostsBusinessDimension
URL: The link to the data in Tableau Url

Tableau Project

Public ID: TableauProject

Description

Description
Owner in Source

The only harvested metadata are email addresses. To harvest this metadata, you need to enable the Metadata API by setting the restOnly property in your lineage harvester configuration file to false.

For additional rules and limitations, see Additional information, further down in this topic.

OwnerInSource

BI Folder assembles / is assembled in BI Folder

BIFolderAssemblesBIFolder
Business Dimension groups / is grouped into Report BusinessDimensionGroupsReport

BI Folder contains / contained in Data Asset

BIFolderContainsDataAsset

Tableau Workbook

Public ID: TableauWorkbook

Description

Description
Document creation date DocumentCreationDate
Document modification date DocumentModificationDate
Document size DocumentSize
Owner in Source

The only harvested metadata are email addresses. To harvest this metadata, you need to enable the Metadata API by setting the restOnly property in your lineage harvester configuration file to false.

For additional rules and limitations, see Additional information, further down in this topic.

OwnerInSource
URL: The link to the data in Tableau Url

Visits count

This is the amount of times the workbook was viewed in Tableau.

VisitsCount
Report groups / is grouped into Report ReportGroupsReport
Tableau Workbook contains / contained in Tableau Data Model TableauWorkbookContainsTableauDataModel
Business Dimension groups / is grouped into Report BusinessDimensionGroupsReport

Tableau Dashboard

Public ID: TableauDashboard

Assets of this type are only created if the Tableau user has the Download/Save As permission on the workbook.

Document creation date DocumentCreationDate

Document modification date

DocumentModificationDate
Owner in Source

The only harvested metadata are email addresses. To harvest this metadata, you need to enable the Metadata API by setting the restOnly property in your lineage harvester configuration file to false.

For additional rules and limitations, see Additional information, further down in this topic.

OwnerInSource

Report image: The image of the report.

Images are downloaded and attached to the assets in Data Catalog. You can configure the maximum file size and content types of the Tableau images in the Collibra DGC service settings.
ReportImage
URL: The link to the data in Tableau Url
Visible on server VisibleOnServer

Visits count

This is the amount of times the dashboard was viewed in Tableau.

VisitsCount
Report groups / is grouped into Report ReportGroupsReport
Report uses / used in Data Attribute ReportUsesDataAttribute
Report uses / used in Report ReportUsesReport

Tableau Worksheet

Public ID: TableauWorksheet

Assets of this type are only created if the Tableau user has the Download/Save As permission on the workbook.

Document creation date DocumentCreationDate

Document modification date

DocumentModificationDate

Report image: The image of the report.

Images are downloaded and attached to the assets in Data Catalog. You can configure the maximum file size and content types of the Tableau images in the Collibra DGC service settings.
ReportImage
URL: The link to the data in Tableau Url
Visible on server VisibleOnServer

Visits count

This is the amount of times the worksheet was viewed in Tableau.

VisitsCount
Report groups / is grouped into Report ReportGroupsReport

Report uses / used in Data Attribute

ReportUsesDataAttribute
Report uses / used in Report ReportUsesReport

Tableau Data Attribute

Public ID: TableauDataAttribute

Assets of this type are only created if the Tableau user has the Download/Save As permission on the data source.

Description

Description

Calculation Rule

CalculationRule
Data Type: The data type of a data asset, as it is declared by the data source. DataType
Role in Report RoleInReport
BI Data Model contains / is part of BI Data Attribute BIDataModelContainsBIDataAttribute
Data Element targets / sources Data Element DataElementTargetsDataElement

Report uses / used in Data Attribute

ReportUsesDataAttribute

Tableau Data Model

Public ID: TableauDataModel

Assets of this type are only created if the Tableau user has the Download/Save As permission on the data source.

Description

Description

Certified

Note Certification is only possible for published Tableau data sources.

Certified

Document creation date

DocumentCreationDate

Document modification date

DocumentModificationDate

Original Name: The name of the data source in Tableau

OriginalName
Owner in Source

The only harvested metadata are email addresses. To harvest this metadata, you need to enable the Metadata API by setting the restOnly property in your lineage harvester configuration file to false.

For additional rules and limitations, see Additional information, further down in this topic.

OwnerInSource
BI Data Model contains / is part of BI Data Attribute BIDataModelContainsBIDataAttribute
Business Dimension source / is source of System BusinessDimensionSourceSystem
Tableau Workbook contains / contained in Tableau Data Model TableauWorkbookContainsTableauDataModel
Data Asset contained in / contains BI Folder BIFolderContainsDataAsset

Additional information

For the Owner in source attribute, the following rules apply:

  • If the system creates a Tableau data object and the Tableau data object does not have a user ID, the Owner in source attribute is shown as System on the asset page.
  • If the user who created a Tableau data object no longer exists, the Owner in source attribute is shown as empty on the asset page.

Note The Owner is source metadata (email address) is only returned if the user is the owner of the data inside the project. If the user is the owner of the project, but not the data in the project, the metadata is not returned. This is a known issue that is specific to the Tableau Metadata API.

Example of ingested Tableau metadata

The following image shows an example structure after synchronizing Tableau.

Recommended hierarchy within a domain

You can enable hierarchies for the domain (or domains) in which your Tableau assets were ingested. Doing so makes it easier to understand the relation between your Tableau assets, when viewing the assets on the domain page.

Follow these steps to enable and configure the recommended hierarchy.

Steps

  1. Open the domain page of the relevant BI Catalog domain.
  2. On the content toolbar, click .
    The Configure Hierarchy dialog box appears.
  3. Select Enable Hierarchy.
  4. Select Multipath.
  5. Start typing and select each of the following relation types:
    • Server hosts Business Dimension
    • BI Folder assembles BI Folder
    • Business Dimension groups Report
    • Report groups Report
    • Report uses Report
    • Report uses Data Attribute
    • BI Folder contains Data Asset
    • BI Data Model contains BI Data Attribute
    • Tableau Workbook contains Tableau Data Model
  6. Click Apply.

Note 
  • In an asset view, if any asset is deleted, for example via synchronization or manual deletion, the view is recreated and the hierarchy is lost. In this case, you can again enable and configure the recommended hierarchy.
  • When viewing the hierarchy for a community or domain, if the parent of a node that is in the community or domain belongs to a different community or domain, that node is not shown in the hierarchy.

Create a Tableau operating model diagram view

You can create a Tableau-specific diagram view, to visualize the operating model. The following procedure provides instruction on how to quickly create a new diagram view by copying and pasting the JSON code in the diagram view text editor.

Steps

  1. Open the asset page.
  2. Click the Diagram tab.
    The diagram is shown in the default diagram view.
  3. Click to add a new view.
  4. Select the Text option below the diagram view name.
    The diagram view text editor is shown.
  5. Copy the code from the Show JSON code section below and paste it in the diagram view text editor.
  6. Click Save.
  7. Edit the name and description of the diagram view as needed.