Tableau ingestion considerations

Authentication requirements

Tableau Cloud requires multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all Admin users. However, the CLI lineage harvester (deprecated) does not support MFA. Therefore:

  • Cloud admins: You must use token-based authentication to sign in.
  • Other users: This requirement does not affect Tableau Server users or Cloud users with an Explorer role.

You must use a Tableau account that has access to all relevant sites.

Metadata and lineage limitations

Some aspects of Tableau might limit how much lineage Collibra can show.

Limitation Details
Custom SQL If Tableau’s API does not support your specific custom SQL, your lineage may be incomplete. For complete information, see the Tableau documentation on Tableau Catalog support for custom SQL and Tableau Lineage and custom SQL connections.
Stored procedures Collibra Data Lineage shows lineage between the data source and the worksheet. However, it cannot stitch or link to the underlying database.
Unions and joins Collibra Data Lineage only partially supports unions and joins. If, for example, you create a union in the Tableau UI, it will not appear in Data Catalog or in the lineage. If you create a union using a custom SQL query in Tableau, it is supported.
HIdden items
  • Hidden Tableau dashboards and worksheets are ingested in Collibra, but the path to these data objects in Tableau is not included. For more information, including how to find such assets in your Collibra environment, go to Tableau and the "Visible on server" attribute type.
  • Hidden measures and dimensions in Tableau (those that are grayed-out) are not ingested in Collibra.
Labels and aliases The API only returns the actual names of data fields, not their custom labels or aliases.
Tableau views with objects with the sheet type “dashboard” Views with objects with the sheet type “dashboard” are not referenced by the dashboard in the API code. Therefore, the Collibra Data Lineage service instances can’t process them and the dashboards don’t appear in the technical lineage.