With the introduction of Tableau 9, you had the ability to control the descriptions on the project folders and add some basic formatting.

Initially though, I was very disappointed with the feature as it seemed to make the folders look like large empty spaces.

You can see in the default folder, that the text has been changed, but who want’s to look at all of that white space and the grey image of a file?

I thought that there had to be a better way.

At first, we added text to explain what the folder was and looked at the basic editing functions available –

We can see at the bottom the ability to use basic HTML formatting, but as with a few things in Tableau, it is the undocumented things which really add value.

For example, through adding the <img src/> code, we can add a picture, to make the folder more colourful, in the example below this is as simple as putting in a footer.

 

 

What about putting in a picture of a report in the project though, to show the end user an example of the content.  That works as well, brightening up the default folder.

 

But how about taking it a step further.  If <img src/> works for an image, can I make it work for a .gif to allow me to run a carousel of the content within the folder?

 

 

 

Well that looks a lot better and is more intuitive for the end user.

 

So what are the steps you need to follow to do this?

1. You need to have admin access to the box where server is located
2. Create a .gif (I use giphy.com) by using some screen shots of reports in the project
3. On the server, go to this location and save the .gif                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    It doesn’t matter where your Tableau server files are saved, as long as it goes into the htdocs folder
4. On the server web portal, edit the project description within the details tab                                                                                                                                                                                                       
5. Type in the following code – <img src=”filename.gif” width=”448″ align=”middle” /> Replace filename with the name you gave the .gif.  As long as it is stored in the htdocs folder you do not need to put the full path
6. Click save and it should be working a treat

 

If after this, you only see a static image, your browser settings are probably restricting activeX controls.

 

 

The finished work should look like this