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 it was refreshed last time, etc), it will still trigger Tableau Ask Data Index right away that is unnecessary server actions.

The above behavior may not be a big deal for small published data sources but can make difference for large published data sources, specially if your server has hundreds or thousands of published data sources.

How to avoid unnecessary Ask Data indexing for large published data sources?

The best option is to turn Ask Data off by default for those very large published data sources.  How?

UPDATE datasources
SET nlp_setting = ‘disabled’
WHERE size > ‘400000’

What is does is to turn off Ask Data for those published data sources   with size more than 400Mgb (or whatever size you decide).

Why this approach?

1. Data source owner can always turn Ask Data on if they do want to use Ask Data. This is done by self-service
2. You are not turning off Ask Data for whole server which is doable but need tsm restart to change it back.
3. For those who may not know, the following command will turn whole server’s Ask Data off
   tsm configuration set -k features.NLBox -v false
   tsm pending-changes apply
4. The following commend will turn whole server’s Ask Data on
   tsm configuration set -k features.NLBox -v true
   tsm pending-changes apply
5. I am not aware commend to turn on/off for a site

Re-Cap: If you are concerned Ask Data always consumes server resources when mouse over to any published data sources even the user doesn’t intend to use Ask Data. Server Admin can turn Ask Data off for large published data source by default with one simple. Pls note that it is not supported by Tableau.

As a server admin, do you have to broadcast notifications about server upgrade and other unexpected server events that would impact every server user?

It may not a big deal when you have only hundreds of server users. However it can become a big burden when your server has 20K, 100K or more users.  Even you have a good distribution list, overtime you are creating negative impressions to your user community since normally you only send negative news to them.

How to avoid broadcasting emails to large numbers of users while still communicate the message?

The answer is Tableau server portal customization with a banner like this one below:

Warning: It is not a supported solution and you are on your own risk.

• You can schedule the banner show up window.
• You can also control the type of banner (like Informational or Alert, etc).
• Users can click DISMISS button if they do not want to see the banner again (after clear the browser cache, the banner will still show up again during the window even DISMISS button clicked before).
• Users can {Click Here} to see more details as you do not want the banner to have more than one line
• You can design different color banner as well for different types of notification

How to use banner?

• We turn banner on a few days before  server upgrade to let  users know that they will access Disaster Recover instance
• Banner is also in during server upgrade to warn users that they are access Disaster Recover instance  that likely has different data than Production.

Re-cap: Tableau portal banner is a great way to communicate with users for server planned and unplanned event notifications. Pls vote https://community.tableau.com/ideas/3738