ROW LEVEL SECURITY
Company: Tableau
Project: Row Level Security in Tableau
Role: Senior UX Designer
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Row level security for Tableau Data was one of the most asked for features by the Tableau Community. At it's core, Row-level security (RLS) in Tableau restricts the rows of data a certain user can see in a workbook. To do this, users had to create complicated permissions and policies etc. in Tableau. This feature would allow admins to better control what data users see in a published view based on their Tableau Server login account.
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The Problem
The How
This project was far reaching and long. I was brought on to work with the Principal designer and team of engineers and PM in the very early stages of the project. My job was to take the very complex features of RLS and bring it to life with UI and UX. I also reviewed my designs with the engineering and design teams. First I worked on the basic UI framework that RLS would be. Next I worked on designing the basic CRUD actions of this feature. Each step of this process was reviewed with the engineers, PM, design and management.
During this time, the engineers were working on back end functionality for the ability to allow security policies and extracts inside a Published Connection. Things changed quickly and there was often ambiguity around what the requirements were etc. We ended up working on 3-4 alpha releases before even thinking about the MVP release. This ended up working well because it allowed the scrum teams to break up the work by release making it more manageable for everyone.
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Another big challenge with this project was there were too many approvers. This project had hundreds of people working on it, but there was not an actual approver in place so the team knew when things were final and we could move forward. This meant that we had a lot of folks giving their opinions but not sure who had the final say. This made for a difficult process for UX and engineering. After being brought to upper management, the problem was addressed. I was working hard on multiple UX problems for extracts and security policies when Tableau went through a company wide re-org. Most of the team was assigned elsewhere including myself.
Despite all of it's challenges during my tenure with RLS, I made a lot of progress in a years time. I had finished the main UX for RLS, created the interaction paradigm for tables, extracts and worked on security policies as well. I was part of 3 alphas released and the project was well poised for MVP release. It was one of the most complex projects I have worked on but I learned a lot about RLS and data governance. I also learned how to work with extreme ambiguity and lack of clarity on a highly visible project.
The Solution
This shows UX for extracts in the RLS UI.
The final design for Alpha 4 had tables and extracts. Security policies were not included.