Tableau: Workbook Policy Enforcement Guide
Introduction
The Workbook Policy Enforcement step allows administrators to automatically validate Tableau workbooks against a set of predefined best practices and organisational policies. This step ensures that workbooks promoted or tested within Wiiisdom Cloud Platform meet specific performance and usability standards.
Prerequisites
- Feature Toggle: Ensure the workbook-policy-enforcement-features is enabled in your environment.
- Permissions: You must have administrative access to the BI Asset Policies menu to configure rules.
- Access Administration: Navigate to the BI Asset Policies administration menu and select the Tableau tab.
- Define Rules: Configure the thresholds and severity for the available rules. Rules are categorised into two main gates:
- Performance: Focuses on technical efficiency (e.g., Custom SQL usage, Extract vs. Live).
- Usability: Focuses on end-user experience (e.g., number of views, dashboard complexity).
- Set Severity: Assign a severity level (Informational, Best Practice, Critical, or Blocker) to each rule. These levels impact the final Quality Gate score (A to E).
Key Points of Attention & Troubleshooting
This guide provides a technical breakdown of how each rule is calculated, where the data is retrieved from, and what is included or excluded.
Rule Name | Scope | Data Retrieval Method | Specifics & Limitations |
Render Duration | Per View | Tableau Simulation Engine: Uses Playwright and the Tableau Embedding API to simulate a user opening the workbook in a browser. | Counted: Published Worksheets and Dashboards.
Excluded: Stories.
|
Hidden Fields | Per Data Source | XML Parsing: Analyzes the .twb file. | Logic: The ratio is calculated by dividing the number of hidden fields by the total number of fields.
Rounding: Rounded up to the nearest hundredth (ceiling).
Excluded: Fields automatically generated by Tableau are notre retrieved.
Limitation: Complex fields like drill-downs, sets, or groups may result in an Unknown status due to current technical limitations. |
Custom SQL Query | Per Data Source | XML, REST API & TDS Parsing: Parses the .twb file. For published data sources, it also uses the Tableau REST API to query all data sources, retrieve the datasourceId from the contentUrl, and parse the .tds file.
|
|
| Per Data Source | XML Parsing: Analyzes the .twb file. |
|
Data Source Embedded | Per Data Source | XML Parsing: Analyzes the .twb file. |
|
Level of Detail (LOD) | Workbook | REST API & XML Parsing: Retrieves published views via REST API and parses the .twb file. | Counted: Only LOD expressions actually used in the workbook's views (worksheets) are counted. If an unpublished worksheet is used in a published dashboard, the LOD expressions it contains are also counted.
Excluded: LOD calculations created within the workbook but not present in any active view.
|
| Workbook | Tableau REST API: Performed via a HEAD request to the server. |
|
Usability Rules
| Rule Name | Scope | Data Retrieval Method | Specifics & Limitations |
Context Filters | Per Worksheet | REST API & XML Parsing: Retrieves published views via REST API and parses the .twb file. | Counted: Published worksheets and unpublished worksheets used in a published dashboard. These worksheets will appear with an "(unpublished)" badge.
|
Dashboards in the Workbook | Workbook | REST API & XML Parsing: Retrieves published views via REST API and parses the .twb file. | Counted: Published Dashboards.
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Global Filters | Workbook | REST API & XML Parsing: Retrieves published views via REST API and parses the .twb file. | Counted: Filters in Data Sources and published Worksheets.
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Views in the Workbook | Workbook | REST API: Retrieves published views via REST API. | Counted: Published Worksheets, Dashboards and Stories.
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Worksheets in Dashboard | Per Dashboard | REST API & XML Parsing: Retrieves published views via REST API and parses the .twb file. | Counted: All worksheets in published Dashboards.
|
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