Tableau Server and Cloud Security Serials:

• Security (1/10): Overview: Security Model: Infra, App Config, Governance and Permission
• Security (2/10): External Site: Separate external users into a separate site and set limited visibility
• Security (3/10): External Server: Separate server outside firewall approach
• Security (4/10): Extension : Sandboxed extension safe to use
• Security (5/10): Explain Data & Data Story : Super low risk to turn on Explain Data and Data Story features
• Security (6/10): Content Owner Left Company: Auto scripts to reminder Project Admin when content owner left company
• Security (7/10): All Users Group: Auto scripts to remove any permissions associated with All Users group
• Security (8/10): Large Group : Auto email alert if large group used in permission
• Security (9/10): PII : Auto detect PII data
• Security (10/10): Trade Secrets : Content owner tag Trade Secrets data and alert about permissions drift

Advanced Deployment How To Serials:

• Advanced Deployment (10/10) : Desktop & Prep Deployment in enterprise : How to install Desktop and Prep Builder in a single package and  activate license automatically
• Advanced Deployment (9/10): Increase Tableau server extract backgrounder efficiency : Those tricks will improve your backgrounder efficiency 80% ore more.
• Advanced Deployment (8/10) : Super Useful Sever Memory Management Features: How to control Hyper query level memory limit  and total memory on Hyper node
• Advanced Deployment(7/10) : Make VIP extract priority stick : How to keep VIP extract’s high priority even after workbook or data source has a new revision?
• Advanced Deployment (6/10) – Turn off Ask Data for large data source : If you are concerned that some very larger data source’s Ask Data may take too much server resources, you can turn all of them off based on size of the extract.
• Advanced Deployment (5/10) – Notification to all server users: Customize Tableau server portal to have a banner to communicate server events impacting every user
• Advanced Deployment(4/10) – Reduced upgrade time from 50 to 5 hrs: Create your own ‘incremental backup’ to cut upgrade downtime from 50 to 5 hrs
• Advanced Deployment(3/10) – Run FileStore on Network Storage: Yes, you can run FileStore on heigh end network storage that can DR data really close to Prod
• Advanced Deployment(2/10) – Content Migration: Move content from one server to another can be done with using Tableau’s new Deployment Tools or REST API with custom scripts for better scalability.
• Advanced Deployment(1/10) – Create Internal Tableau Extension Gallery: How to adopt Dashboard Extension feature and completely avoid the data vulnerability that out-of-box Tableau Extension Gallery has.

Server Automation How To Serials:

1.  Automation(1/10)  – Set Usage Based Extract Schedule: This is a game changer to scale extracts on Tableau server.  Hourly schedule can become daily if the workbook not used for 2 days. Daily becomes weekly, weekly becomes monthly.
2. Automation(2/10)– Swap Backgrounders and VizQL dynamically: This is V2018.2 TSM feature to get more efficiency out of your Tableau platform investment. There was small bug on V2018.2 & V2018.3 but good news is that bug was fixed on V2019.1
3. Automation(3/10) – Timeout long subscriptions and auto send email to workbook owner:  I found some smart publishers know their workbook render is too slow so they use subscription to send data to user’s inbox, and some subscriptions can run 30 mins. This  blog shows how to lower the timeout and send meaningful message to the owners.
4. Automation(4/10) – VizAlert for Slow Render Workbooks : How to let workbook owners know automatically that their workbooks are slow or become slower.
5. Automation(5/10) – Remove Permissions for Slow Render Workbooks: When VizAlerts are sent to slow render workbook owners, what if they do not take actions? This blog shares how to enforce it on the server by removing workbook permissions automatically
6. Automation(6/10) – Advanced Archiving : How to archive unused workbooks on the server. This is almost must have feature
7. Automation(7/10) – Data Source Archiving: After workbooks are deleted, you may want to delete orphan data sources. This blog talks about selection criteria and API details.
8. Automation(8/10) – Workbook/Disk size governance: If deletion of unused workbooks is not good enough, this blog shares some practical tips to prevent long workbooks to be published to server
9. Automation(9/10) – Remove any permissions for All Users group:   Tableau’s built-in All Users group can be useful but can be a very bad thing   – it is too easy for content owners to mistakenly grant permissions to All Users group unintentionally. This blog shares tips to fix this problem automatically.
10.  Automation(10/10) – How to make some workbook cache shorter than others:  How to achieve different cache setting for specific workbook? How to have live connection workbooks cache much shorter than workbook wit extracts?

Scaling Tableau – How To Serials:

If you follow the tips/approaches in following blogs, you should be able to deploy Tableau at enterprise with thousands of  publishers on hundreds of Tableau server cores:

 

1. SCALING TABLEAU (1/10) – VERSION CONTROL AND REVISION HISTORY :  How to decide how many revisions to keep on server to balance the need of revision control and have  peace of mind about server storage.
2. SCALING TABLEAU (2/10) – SET EXTRACT PRIORITY BASED ON DURATION: How to set extract priority dynamically to achieve 70% extract efficiency. This is one of the most important things to scale Tableau in enterprise.
3. SCALING TABLEAU (3/10) – USE PUBLISHED DATA SOURCES: How to leverage published data sources to achieve single source of truth, less workload to EDW and better data governance. Also Tableau’s new Ask Data feature works only for published data sources.
4. SCALING TABLEAU (4/10) – USE SITES: What are the common site use cases and how to govern sites.
5. SCALING TABLEAU (5/10) – LICENSE MANAGEMENT: How to get most out of your Tableau licenses, how to manage your Desktop licenses and server licenses. This blog was updated and covers Tableau’s new subscription model as well.
6. SCALING TABLEAU (6/10) – ROW LEVEL SECURITY: This blog explains various options of managing row level security in Tableau. It also has super useful link with sample workbooks & PPT at the end.
7. SCALING TABLEAU (7/10) – UNDERSTAND SERVER PERMISSIONS: This is a deep dive about Tableau permissions from site role to project level, workbook level, data source and view level permission settings, and best practices.
8. SCALING TABLEAU (8/10) – LEVERAGE V10 FEATURES FOR ENTERPRISE: How to leverage those V10 new features to scale Tableau to enterprise.
9. SCALING TABLEAU (9/10) – CONTROL DESKTOP UPGRADE: How to hack Tableau’s control product updates and make it work for actual upgrade.
10. SCALING TABLEAU (10/10) – ARCHITECTURE & AUTOMATION: Practice guide on your Tableau server architecture and automation work.

 Governed Self-Service  How To Serials:

How to govern self-service? What are roles and responsibilities of Business & IT? How to drive Tableau community within organization? How to use Tableau sites? How to manager Tableau workbook performance? How to govern data? How to avoid islands of information? How to measure self-service BI maturity? Please read my 10 series blogs about governed self-service analytics:

1. Governed Self-Service Analytics (1/10)
2. Governed Self-Service Analytics : Governance (2/10)
3. Governed Self-Service Analytics: Roles & Responsibilities (3/10)
4. Governed Self-Service Analytics: Community (4/10)
5. Governed Self-Service Analytics: Multi-tendance (5/10)
6. Governed Self-Service Analytics: Publishing (6/10)
7. Governed Self-Service Analytics: Performance Management (7/10)
8. Governed Self-Service Analytics: Data Governance (8/10)
9. Governed Self-Service Analytics: Content Management (9/10)
10. Governed Self-Service: Maturity Model (10/10)

Server Feature Adoption How To Serials:

1. Feature Adoption – How to setup server cache – Believe it or not, the server cache plays huge role to scale your server and improve server render time. There is a way to set cache policy differently for extract vs live connection although out-of-box server has only one global setting.
2. Feature Adoption – Dashboard Extensions – There is a secure way to use dashboard extensions.
3. Feature Adoption – Tableau Prep
4. Feature Adoption – Pre-compute Workbooks viewed recently –  This flag is must-have for the server using a lot of extract.
5. Feature Adoption – Lock Project Permission – Tableau Permissions are very comprehensive and confusing.
6. Feature Adoption – Project Leader – How to leverage Project Leader for more self-service.
7. Feature Adoption – Data-Driven Alert – Find out difference between Data-Driven Alert and Subscriptions