It is not uncommon to share your Tableau dashboards to your vendor users or partner users, like vendor performance KPI data. To avoid surprises, it is better for vendors to know exactly how your company evaluates their specific business process metrics, Tableau can be a perfect tool for it. All it needs is to grant … Continue reading TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (2/10): external site →

My previous blog PROJECT (2/10) : Project Leader’s permission details out all activities can be done by project leader or owner assuming that project leader/owner have the creator or explorer (can publish) site roles. Site role is another very confusing but important Tableau concern. Project leader/owner vs site role Site role defines the maximum level … Continue reading Project (3/10) : Project Leader/owner and their site role →

Tableau server has a multi-tenancy feature called “sites” which is mainly for enterprise customers. Site strategy is one of the hot topics at the most recent Silicon Valley Enterprise Tableau User Group meet-up. Many people are not clear how to use sites. This blog covers three areas about Tableau sites: Basic concepts Common use cases … Continue reading How To Use Tableau Sites? →

My previous post TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (9/10): PII and DETECT AND DELETE PII DATA ON TABLEAU SERVER talk about PII detection and deletion scripts. Why and how. There is another type of concerns related to compartmented secret information on Tableau server got out of hands, like future products, or trade secrets etc. How … Continue reading TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (10/10): Trade Secrets →

Tableau Cloud or server has one built-in user group : All Users. It is group available in any site. All Users can be very connivence for content that can be shared to every Cloud or server user. However in large organization, it likely ends up a lot excess permissions. I used to receive emails asking … Continue reading TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (7/10): All Users group →

What should be done when Tableau server or Cloud users left company? The right process is to un-license AND then delete the users from Tableau server or Tableau when users left company. Admins can un-license content owners but Admins can’t delete users who own content even the users left company. You will have to change … Continue reading TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (6/10): Conten Owner left company →

My last post talked about Dashboard Extension security, in short, Sandboxed extensions are safe to use while network extensions are not safe to use. This blog focuses Explain Data and Data Story security concerns. Is Explain Data safe to turn on for the server or site? Yes Explain Data Concerns: It may expose data in … Continue reading TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (5/10): Explain Data & DatA story →

At high level, there are two types of Tableau extensions: Dashboard Extension: Do things you wish Tableau did easily but does not and those features are developed by 3rd parties: Sandboxed: Tableau hosted, run in a protected environment without access to any other resources or services on the web (Safe to use) Network: Anyone can … Continue reading TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (4/10): Extension →

My previous post shared one recommended setup to segment all external users to one Limited Visibility site that is a great balance between security and on-going maintenance. For some organizations that do not allow mixed internal and external users in one Tableau server at all, there is option to setup dedicated External Server: Two separated … Continue reading TABLEAU SERVER AND CLOUD SECURITY (3/10): EXTERNAL Server →

Updated Nov 2023: After one year of initial View Acceleration release, Tableau released new View Acceleration Recommendation feature, which makes the View Acceleration much more user friends. What happened is there are too many scenarios that View Acceleration is not supported (like live connection, view has user filter or role level security, or view render … Continue reading What is view acceleration? →

Tableau’s nested project feature has been there since v10.5, however I only start to see more people to use it after v2020.1’s new lock permission feature – allowing permissions being locked independently at any nested project. This blog focuses on nested project features and next blog will talk about how lock works with nested project. … Continue reading PROJECT (4/10) : Sub-project or nested project →

My previous blog Project (1/10) : Differences between Project Leader and owner talked about differences between project leader and project owner. This blog details out the permission details that project leader has. Before dive into details what project leaders are allowed to do, remember this golden rule – project leader and owner got all the … Continue reading PROJECT (2/10) : Project Leader’s permission →

The publishing process & policy covers the followings areas:  Engagement Process; Publisher Roles; Publishing Process and Dashboard Permissions. First step is to get a  space on the shared enterprise self-service server for your group’s data and self-service dashboard, which is called Engagement Process. The main questions are: From requester perspective, how to request a space … Continue reading GOVERNED SELF-SERVICE ANALYTICS: PUBLISHING (6/10) →

I was in the panel discussion at Tableau Conference 2015 about self-service analytics to a group of executives. Guess what is the no.1 most frequent asked question – data governance. How to make sure that data not get out of hands? How to make sure that the self-service analytics does not break the existing organization’s … Continue reading Governed Self-Service Analytics: Data Governance (8/10) →

Performance management has been everyone’s concerns when it comes to a shared self-service environment since nobody wants to be impacted by others. This is especially true when each business unit decides their own publishing criteria where central IT team does not gate the publishing process. How to protect the shared self-service environment? How to prevent … Continue reading Governed Self-Service Analytics: Performance Management (7/10) →

Tableau has a multi-tendance strategy which is called site.  I heard many people asking if they should use site, when should use site. For some large Tableau deployment,  people also ask if you have created separate Tableau instances. All those are Tableau architecture questions or multi-tendance strategy.   How do you approach this? I will use … Continue reading Governed Self-Service Analytics: Multi-tendance (5/10) →

Tableau 2020.2 released a long waiting Metrics feature.  Metrics make it easy to monitor key performance indicators from web or  Mobile. It is super easy to create. When you use Tableau Mobile to check Metrics, you can update trend line data range and even compare measures with time frames. Marc Reid(Zen Master)’s dataviz.blog has a nice … Continue reading Tableau Metrics Deep Dive →

Tableau v2020.3 released a super useful  Tag ‘Stale Content’ feature.  There are two big use cases:  content archiving and stop extract refresh schedule for stale content. How it works? How to automate the workflow? ‘Stale Content’ for server/site admins Tag ‘Stale Content’  Automate archiving workflow Move or delete ‘Stale Content’ Automate ‘Stale Content’ notification  1. ‘Stale Content’ for server/site admins ‘Stale Content’ feature actually … Continue reading Tableau Server New Stale Content Feature →

Tableau v2020.3 released a super useful feature for Tableau server admins – Automatically Suspend Extract Refresh Tasks for inactive workbooks.  This blog explains how it works. Why suspend extract refresh for inactive content?  You may be surprised that how many of extracts are running daily or hourly while nobody actually uses the dashboards for the post month (I heard … Continue reading How ‘Automatically Suspend Extract Refresh Tasks’ Works? →

Self-service analytics community is a group of people who share the common interest about self-service analytics and common value about data-driven decision-making culture. Why people are motivated for the internal self-service community? The self-service community motivations are as followings: Empowerment: Self-service stems from – and affects – a wider macro trend of DIY on one … Continue reading Governed Self-Service Analytics: Community (4/10) →

I wanted to close this advanced deployment series with Desktop and Prep Builder enterprise deployment approach : how to let users to get Desktop & Prep installed and activated automatically with a single package.  My installer has the following features: Install Desktop Install Prep Activate and register Desktop and Prep license Get Desktop reporting setup Customize the Desktop settings, for … Continue reading Advanced Deployment (10/10) : Desktop & Prep Deployment in enterprise →

I have a very popular blog about extract priority already : SCALING TABLEAU (2/10) – SET EXTRACT PRIORITY BASED ON DURATION.  It  increased  70-80% efficiency on my server. Today’s blog is for different use case –  VIP extracts. Do you have VIP extract priority ask? How to handle it if you have business requirement to keep a few mission … Continue reading Advanced Deployment : Make VIP extract priority stick →

Ask Data’s entry point is the published data sources. By default, Ask Data is ON  and Data source analysis (Ask Data indexing) is  triggered by user request for ALL published data sources. What it means is that even the user did not intend to use Ask Data when come to the published data source (like to see refresh schedules, or check when … Continue reading Advanced Deployment – Turn off Ask Data for large data source →

This blog series are advanced deployment techniques that will give you some ideas what actually can be done with Tableau server and Desktop. I’d like to share how we did the followings in our Tableau implementation: Internal Tableau Extension Gallery Controlled publishing Run FileStore on Network Storage ‘Incremental’ backup Customize Tableau Portal with alert feature Custom … Continue reading Advanced Deployment – Create Internal Tableau Extension Gallery →

You wish that live connection workbook’s cache can be much shorter than workbook with extracts. You also wish that cache level can be controlled at each data source or workbook. Unfortunately Tableau server does not have those features yet. One Tableau server has only one cache policy – all workbooks have the same length of cache….. … Continue reading Automation – How to make some workbook cache shorter than others →

If you follow my previous blog Automation – Advanced Archiving  to archive workbooks,  overtime you may also need to archive data sources. Why delete data sources? If the workbook has embedded data sources, the embedded data will be deleted when the workbook is deleted. However if the workbook has separate published data sources, when the workbook is … Continue reading Automation – Data Source Archiving →

My previous blog talks about sending automated alert (VizAlerts) for slow render workbooks, this blog will show you how to  enforce timeout or other government rules for slow render workbooks. Problem statement: Slow workbook alert  is important and absolutely necessary. However sometimes the alerts and email renders are not good enough – what if some workbook owners … Continue reading Automation – Remove Permissions for Slow Render Workbooks →

Tableau server has a built-in All Users group in each site.  It consists of all users as it is named. It can be useful when you need to share content to all users. However we found that All Users group is a really bad feature for large enterprise server  – it is too easy for content owners to … Continue reading Automation – Remove any permissions for All Users group →

My previous post (Automation – Set Usage Based Extract Schedule) provides a practical server governance approach that re-schedules self-service publisher’s extracts based on workbook usage automatically. This blog talks about handling old workbooks that nobody uses anymore over a period of time.  The keyword is archiving. Many server admins are doing archiving. The tips and tricks in … Continue reading Automation – Advanced Archiving →

Updated Jan 2024: Cache is one of the most confusing things on Tableau server.  The blog is trying to answer the following questions: How Tableau server cache works? What are the server settings to control cache expiration? Would cache be refreshed after extract refresh? Does cache work for both live connections and extracts the same way? … Continue reading FEATURE ADOPTION – HOW TO SET UP SERVER CACHE →

Tableau 10.3 has a big feature for server admins:  Automatic query caching refresh after extracts which is also called: Pre-compute workbooks viewed recently.  It is a new flag that can be enabled for each site without downtime.  My Tableau server uses a lot of extracts, after we enabled this feature, the overall server render time improved 20% for all … Continue reading FEATURE ADOPTION – PRE-COMPUTE WORKBOOKS VIEWED RECENTLY →

Lock project permission is a great Tableau server feature. This blog cover the followings: What is lock permission Why lock permission Who can lock/unlock How it works for nested project What is Lock Permission? Locked project permission means that all workbooks and data sources in this project always use the default permission from project level. … Continue reading Feature Adoption – Lock Project Permission →

If you feel that you did not understand what Tableau project leaders can do, you are not alone.  Hope this blog will give you some clarity on what project’s privileges are and how to leverage them to enable more self-service. Project leader’s  privileges  for the workbooks and data sourced published to  the project and all its sub-projects: Change extract … Continue reading Feature Adoption – Project Leader →

Data-driven alert is a great long waiting feature of Tableau V10.3. It allows interactors to set threshold on the numeric axis of the view and receive emails only when the data exceeds (or below) the defined threshold. It also allows interactors to define how often to receive the emails when conditions are met. It works … Continue reading Feature Adoption – Data-Driven Alert →

I’d like to complete my scaling Tableau 10 serial blogs with architecture and automation topic. If you follow the tips/approaches in this scaling Tableau 10 serials and governance self-service 10 serials, you should not have any problems to deploy Tableau at enterprise with thousands of Desktop publishers on a few hundred core server cluster that supports ten thousand extracts/day, … Continue reading SCALING TABLEAU (10/10) – ARCHITECTURE & AUTOMATION →

When I think about Tableau permissions, I have two words: Robust –  Tableau’s permission features are very comprehensive and robust. Definitely enterprise grade. Confusion – On the other side, Tableau’s permission is kind of confusing  since it has too many different variables to set permissions. To understand permissions, let’s start by looking into structures within Tableau server. … Continue reading SCALING TABLEAU (7/10) – UNDERSTAND SERVER PERMISSIONS →

Tableau has speeded up its release cycles from one release per year to three releases 2015. Tableau also announced that there would be four releases in 2016. Tableau is going to spend more R&D $ this year than all the last 13 years of the company combined. I love the pace of innovation. Tableau 9.3 … Continue reading Tableau 9.3 New Features →

If you are confused about Tableau Data Extract API, Tableau SDK and Web Data Connector, please read this blog. Tableau Data Extract API, introduced in v8, is to create binary TDE files from data sources. You can use C, C++, Java or Python to code the Extract API that generates TDE files. Tableau v9.1 incorporated … Continue reading Tableau Data Extract API, Tableau SDK and Web Data Connector →