Tableau Server

Does Tableau support multi-tenancy?

Yes. Tableau accomplishes this through sites.

My company is concerned about data governance. How can Tableau help me?

"What kind of governance concerns do you have? That means different things to different industries." Tableau Data Server is a great solution for governance. It provides governance by enforcing entitlements on the data connection itself. And remember - it is a continuum. So you can decide exactly where on the top down v bottom up spectrum you want to be.

What is a group?

A group is a collection of Tableau Server users. Groups make it easier to manage multiple users. Create groups locally on the server or import from Active Directory. Active Directory groups will need to be synced on a regular basis to keep the server up to date.

What is a project?

A project is a collection of related workbooks within a site. When publishing a report to a project the default action is to copy security from that project to the report. This makes setting up project security an important part of deployment.

What is our governance story? What is our governance philosophy?

In order to educate our customers and challenge them to think differently you must be able to articulate why we have built our data governance strategy the way we have. Traditional metadata/governance is top down. It assumes that the people at the top (IT) know exactly what you will need at the start - just like traditional BI reporting. 'We will come up with a dictionary of things that you can then leverage in your analysis.' In the Tableau world we believe that people are smart. We encourage creativity. We want people to be able to answer their own questions independently and the top down governance approach often does not serve that. For example historically you would start with many data sources and reports...and to make this easier to manage you would try to rationalize the content into fewer things. For example "We will take all the reports you build and go build a few uber-reports that cover everything you want! And on the data side we will build a warehouse." Top down governance plays really well with this restricting idea. But with Tableau we want to encourage people to explore and find answers. So we enable both top down and bottom up. With Data Server we say a central person can create and certify and share metadata models. But we will still encourage creativity on TOP of that. (For example when users click a shared data connection on Tableau Server then continue to enrich it by asking questions that cause them to create groups sets hierarchies calculations and so forth.) What we are saying is let the users go and answer their questions build their content and through that process the best practices will emerge. For example if the business always want to see profit ratio - they will go build it. It is not a matter of us at the start saying what do you want? Instead track what they do and their usage - and the most common way they calculate profit ratio will rise to the top. The key is that it is a continuum and the organization can choose what degree of top down or bottom up it needs for each of its unique use cases. This is incredibly powerful and not immediately apparent to most customers unless we educate them.

As an administrator how can I see who is looking at content?

Look at the bottom of a view or dashboard on Tableau Server. If you are an administrator there will be a link "Who has seen this view?" An administrator can also see who has been looking at a particular views from the Tableau Server status page.

What web browsers are Server & Online compatible with?

Our Tech Spec page is always up to date. It changes often enough we recommend looking there first.

How do I use search in Tableau Server?

Quick Search searches all content. Filtered Search only shows content relevant to the page you are on. For example if you are viewing a project page and you search a filtered search will only search the workbooks in that project.

How do I view Tableau on my mobile devices?

Server and Online views will render automatically on mobile devices. Tableau Server also offers a free companion app for Android iPhone and tablet etc. The mobile app is designed for: • Easy fingertip navigation and viz exploration. • To work offline - use snapshots when Wi-Fi isn't available.

What is a site?

Sites are independent environments for different organizations or groups on the same server. Each site's projects workbooks data and user lists are isolated from those of other sites. A system administrator can only see every site and perform actions such as creating sites and making system-wide changes.

What are the differences between these Tableau Server and Tableau Online?

Tableau Online Tableau Server How long does it take to get up and running? Minutes. No installation or optimization required. Hours. Installation configuration and optimization needed. How can you access data? Live connections to cloud data bases : Online Sync for on-premise data. Live connections to cloud data and on-premise data. Can external users access dashboards? Yes. Only internet access is required no VPN requirement. Users must be logged into corporate VPN. How can users authenticate? Email and password (TableauID) SAML Active Directory via SAML IDP and OpenID Connect. Username and password Active Directory SAML Trusted Tickets and OpenID Connect. How can admins manage sites? Only site administration available. Each admin must be a named user. No server admins across sites. Site and server administration available. Admins can manage entire server and across multiple sites. What is the total cost? Per user per year subscription only. Perpetual license + maintenance subscription + hardware. We also support licensing per subscriptor per year for interactors. How to you upgrade to new releases? Upgrades are handled by Tableau and are done without effort from site administrators. Upgrades must be applied manually by a server admin. What hardware is needed? No hardware is needed. All infrastructure is provided and maintained by Tableau. Customer owns maintains and optimizes hardware. How does the license work? Each named user must have their own license. Named user license or a core license.

Why should I use Tableau Server or Online when Tableau Public and Reader are free?

Tableau Public is for people who want to share their data with the entire world with no security. Reader is like the Adobe Reader of data - no centralization no security local offline : just a data viz file floating around in your email. If like most organizations security and collaboration are important to you Tableau Server & Online are for you. They offer: 1. Security 2. Data governance/single source of truth 3. Live/auto-refreshed data connection 4. Zero footprint - end users access via a web browser

Does Tableau support email bursting or email subscriptions?

Tableau Server and Tableau Online do support subscribing groups and individuals with emails sent to an inbox on a schedule. Email bursting is not supported out of the box. • Customer Consulting: Many customers have built their own versions for bursting as well using TabCmd

What authentication models do you support?

Tableau Server supports local authentication and Active Directory authentication. The models are mutually exclusive. To change models a Tableau Server will need reconfiguration. A Tableau Server can also work with trusted tickets and SAML for a single sign on experience and Kerberos SAP HANA and OpenID Connect authentication models.

What is the installation like for a Tableau Server?

This depends on the installation environment and available hardware. A single server is pretty easy - for example I downloaded and installed Tableau Server on my own computer without help. A cluster is relatively easy as well but you will need to align and configure each server within the cluster. For optimum performance always make sure there is more hardware than the minimum requirements. We recommend a call with our Customer Consulting team to gain a better understanding of your specific environment.

There are several of us that use Tableau Desktop to analyze the same data is there a way for us to share Data Connections?

This is exactly what Tableau's Data Server is designed to do - share data. All of the effort to connect to a data source and its associated metadata can be reused by publishing the Data Connection to Tableau Server. Then the data connection its calculations sets defaults and other metadata can be used securely by many people. Data server also does connection pooling. That means all users connect through a single connection to the database rather than opening up multiple connections. IT loves this because it makes a lot easier to performance tune - to track the queries that are going to the database to spot if there is anything going wrong with them.

What is the Tableau Data Server? How should it be used?

Use Tableau Data Server for data manageability and governance. Data Server is a component of Tableau Server and Online that acts like a middle man between Tableau users and the data. It enables IT (and business users who are experts in the data source) to define data source connections that can be easily accessed by often less technical business users in Tableau Desktop. These connections are reusable and secure. This is a fantastic modern metadata approach that satisfies the requirement for both rapid ad hoc analysis and broader metadata management. IT can add value by providing a rich metadata layer (e.g. handle the joins permissions add hierarchies) - yet business people are empowered to modify and extend it (e.g. write their own calculations).

When I open Tableau on my Mac I am not able to connect to Netezza (or X database). Am I missing something?

While Tableau Desktop for Mac has all the same functionality as Tableau Desktop for Windows unfortunately some database vendors have not developed drivers for Macs. Since Tableau uses the native database drivers to connect to all the databases you see in the 'Connect To Data' window it is possible Tableau for Mac may only be able to connect to a subset of the databases you have in your organization. However this is a perfect time to use the Tableau Data Server! If another user has published a data source to the Tableau Data Server you will be able to leverage that data source in your Tableau Desktop to connect to databases that you could not connect directly to from your Mac. In this scenario Tableau Server acts as a Proxy (middle-man) between you and the database to relay all queries and data between the two. This means you do not need to worry about having any drivers on your computer.

Is it possible to edit published Views?

Yes web authoring allows permissioned users to build and edit visualizations dashboards and stories.

Do Tableau products work in a virtual environment (VM)?

Yes. Both Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server can be installed in a virtual environment. It is recommended to dedicate hardware in a virtual environment and provision it with at least the minimum hardware requirements.

Is it possible to embed the views in Server into another application or a portal?

Yes. It is easy to embed views into systems like SharePoint or a company portal. For information on selling Embedded Analytics visit the Embedded Analytics home on Sales Insight.

Is Tableau Server secure?

Yes. Tableau Server is powers analytics for global banks hospitals intelligence agencies much of the Fortune 500 and thousands of other organizations as we speak. As an enterprise Business Intelligence Platform Tableau Server provides robust solutions for all aspects of security but following our philosophy of ease of use. The result is a solution that has rock solid security and is quick to deploy and easy to maintain. See the complete Tableau Server Security whitepaper here.

What can I do to design my dashboards to look good on any device/however people look at them?

You can preview layouts for different devices in Desktop. This allows you to design customize and publish a single dashboard with optimized views for tablets and phones. Note! Device Designer does not support Story Points. • Customer Consulting: Device Designer sizing works based on window size not screen size. (For example you may have a window only partially expanded on your computer screen.) A published dashboard layout will share VizQL sessions and cache. A Server Admin can see the count of device using each type of layout in the Server Postgres database.