PDF Guide

Administrator Best Practices

 Architecture
Tableau Server is a scalable platform for sharing and consuming visualizations and dashboards within
your business.

At the highest level, Tableau Server works quite simply: An author publishes content to the Server, an
end user logs on to consume the content, Tableau Server maintains the freshness and security of said
content.
The Gateway of Tableau Server is the door through which clients communicate with Tableau Server.

Application Server handles the web application, such as browsing and searching, it also processes login
information when your server is configured for local authentication.

The VizQL Server loads and renders views, computes and executes queries. It’s the visual engine of
Tableau. The VizQL Server will direct queries directly to data sources, like SQL Server, or Tableau Data
Extracts.

The Data Engine stores data extracts and answers queries directed to extracts.

The Repository will store published workbooks, user metadata, server metrics, and local authentication
information.

The Backgrounder will run routine tasks, such as extracts refreshes and subscriptions.

Finally, Data Server is the process that acts as a proxy when a client connects to a published data
connection.
You can provision the number of instances for many of these processes. For example, a single Tableau
Server instance could be running 2 VizQL Server processes in order to improve performance. You can
scale these numbers up to leverage more of your hardware. This is what we call scaling up.

You can also deploy Tableau Server Workers, which are basically additional machines, to evenly
distribute the workload. Rather than adding more hardware or processes to a single machine, you are
adding more machines to the Tableau Server environment. We call this scaling out.

More information on these processes can be found in our manual:

http://onlinehelp.tableausoftware.com/current/server/en-us/processes.htm

Administering Tableau Server

The remainder of the exercise assumes you have a working copy of Tableau Server installed on your
local host with provided backup file restored.

For more information on how to restore a tsbak file visit:

http://onlinehelp.tableausoftware.com/current/server/en-us/db_restore.htm

Please open your laptops and open the web browser. In the address bar, type “localhost” to access your
local instance of Tableau Server.

Log in to Tableau Server with the following credentials.

Username: Admin

Pass: TC2014
As an administrator, you will have access to the Admin tab in the Tableau Server portal. This section of
Tableau Server will allow you to execute a myriad of tasks, such as adding new users, creating sites,
projects, and groups, assigning permissions, and more.

Let’s take a look at the Maintenance section. This section will show you important server health
information. Below you will find your Maintenance views that will help you monitor server activity,
usage, and performance.

There are a few additional items in this section that we will come back to at a later point, you’re
welcome to explore on your own time.
Scenario – Part 1
Your tasks:

- Set up Tableau Server for your Sales team

- Give them Publishing rights
- Ensure their content is safe (only Sales may see it)

Adding Users
Click on the All Users section. This section shows you all of your Tableau Server users.

Let’s add a new user.

Click Add at the top of the page.

Enter a username, fullname, and password for the new user.

Click Add User at the bottom to finish adding the user.

Click Return to Users to see your newly added user.

We can also import a list of users via a csv file.

Click import and navigate to the csv file on the desktop.

Click Check File, this will check that the users are being read properly.

Import the users.

Notice the imported users had some privileges pre-defined in the csv. Those settings have been applied.

We can license or unlicensed users as we wish.

Notice we can assign people to be an administrator. There are two types of administrators: system and
site

A system admin can create sites and make other server wide changes. A site administrator may only
manage users and content within their designated site.
Creating Groups
Click the Groups section.

User groups will allow us to provision permissions to content to a group of users. It is much quicker than
assigning permissions on a per user basis.

Select New Group.

Create a group called ‘Sales’.

Now click All Users.

From here we can add users to User Groups. Check the boxes of the users you’d like to group, then click
the Group+ button and select the group.

Add some users to the group now. You can go to the Groups section to confirm the users are in their
Group.
Creating Projects

First, publish a workbook to the Default project from Tableau Desktop.

In the Admin section of Tableau Server, click Projects. Here we can manage our projects. Projects are a
way to organize the content in Tableau Server. Access to a project can be permissioned by user or user
group.

By default, Tableau Server will have the Default project. If you opt to install the sample workbooks, an
option during installation, you will also have the Tableau Samples project.

Add a Project called ‘Sales’. Feel free to add a description as well.

After publishing, go to the content section.

Click on the Workbooks section.

Find the Sales_Only_Dashboard workbook. Move this workbook to the Sales project now.

Go to your Projects and find the workbooks new home in the Sales project.
Assigning Permissions
Let’s assign permissions to the project to ensure this content is only visible to the right people.

Return to the admin section and then the projects section. Check the box for Sales and click Permissions
at the top of the page.

By default, the “All Users” permission is assigned. Let’s delete the All Users permission and add our own
permission settings. Click the box X on the right side of All Users to delete the permission setting.

Now click Add/Edit Permissions.

We can now add Group or User permissions to the project.

Let’s make this Project only accessible to our Sales user group.

Click the Sales user group.

The right half of the window is where we specify what the group is allowed to do within this project.

The Role dropdown has some preset permissions, and we can always customize the permissions.

Let’s set the Sales group to Interactors within this project.

Now that we’ve finished setting Project permissions, we will want to apply the permissions to all content
within the Project. Permissions are applied to the Project already, but they are not assigned to the
workbooks within the Project until we click “Assign the Permission to Contents”.
That means if you deny Bob permission to view a project, but you do not assign the permissions to its
contents, Bob will still be able to access the workbook if he has permissions to do so. This is because a
Tableau Server can set permissions at any level. Bob can have permission to a workbook within a
Project, even if he cannot see the actual Project.

Let’s test our changes now by pretending to be one of the users not in the Sales group. Check which
user is not a part of the Sales group, log out of Tableau Server, then log in as that user.

Remember: the default password for the imported users was password.
Check to see if the workbook permissions are working the way you’d like them to. A user that is not in
the Developers group should not be able to see the Sales Project or the workbooks contained within the
Sales Project.

A user who is not permissioned to view Project Sales will not see it in the projects list.
Scenario – Part 2
Your Tasks:

 Provide your client (Data Dashers) access to Tableau Server

 Keep your users and content separate from client’s users and content
 Allow client to manage their site

Creating Sites
Another way Tableau can provide security to your content is through Sites. Sites are a way to fence off
portions of your Tableau Server for particular users and content.

For example, I want to create a Site that is just for my client. Let’s say my client is called Data Dashers.
The content published to this site will only be accessible to users on this site. In fact, users who do not
belong to this site won’t even know that it exists!

Go to the site section now and create a new site. Name it Data Dashers.

When you create a site, you’re able to specify storage quotas, enable web authoring and subscriptions,
and a few other options.
In order to add users to the site, you’ll need to go to the Site Users section. Make sure you’re looking at
the correct site by checking the top right corner of the portal. It should specify what site you are
connected to. Clicking will allow you to change the site you are administering.

Currently, there are no users in the Data Dashers site.

Add a user now. Let’s add a new user, Dale. Make him a site admin.
Note: If you try to add an existing Tableau Server username to your site, Tableau Server will ask you if
you’d like to give site access to that user.

Log out and log in as Dale.

Notice that Dale has a seamless experience. Logging Dale in will only log him in to the site he is a
member of. If Dale were part of more than 1 site, he would be given an option to select a site after
logging in.

Logging in as an Admin shows a Site selection prompt because System admins are members of all Sites.

Dale, who is a site administrator can now manage content on his site as he pleases.

Since Dale is a site admin, he has some administrative controls.

Click on the admin section.

Dale can monitor site activity and performance.

He can assign privileges and rights to his users, create groups, projects, and manage permissions.

Since he is only a site admin, he won’t have access to server-wide controls, such as creating new sites,
schedules, and server settings.

Log out as Dale, and log in as admin. Notice that we are prompted to select a site. Pick the default site
and click OK.
 Admin Views
Now that we’ve seen how to add users and manage content, let’s explore how we can monitor our
server activity.

Tableau Server comes preloaded with some maintenance views. You can find these in the maintenance
tab.

In many cases, these views will satisfy typical maintenance tasks such as identifying stale dashboards,
tracking background tasks, and ensuring licenses are being used effectively.

Custom Admin Views

In some cases you will want a view that is not preloaded. To create custom admin views, we must
connect to the PostgreSQL repository within Tableau Server.

Open the command prompt.

Navigate to the Tableau Server bin folder. CD “C:\Program Files\Tableau\Tableau Server\8.2\bin”

Enable external access to Tableau Server’s PostgreSQL server: tabadmin dbpass P@ssword

Restart the Server: tabadmin restart

In Tableau Desktop select Data > Connect to Data, then select PostgreSQL as the database to connect
to.

In the PostgreSQL Connection dialog box, type the name or URL for Tableau Server: localhost
Connect using the port you have set up for the pgsql.port, which is 8060 by default: 8060
Type workgroup as the database to connect to.
Connect using the following username and password:
Username: tableau
Password: P@ssword

Click Connect.

Select one or more tables to connect to.

The "tableau" user has access to all of the tables the start with an underscore and hist_. For example,
you can connect to _background_tasks and _datasources. The tables that begin with historical_ point
to hist_ tables. The hist_ tables include information about server users that isn't currently presented in
the User Activity view.

Let’s build a view that shows all of our workbooks that have been accessed.
Connect to hist_workbooks
Drag out historical_events and join on workbook ID

Drag out historical event types and join on event type ID

Click Go to Worksheet to connect.

Add Name to Rows to see the names of workbooks that are tied to an event. You can then filter by the
event (Action Type) and add the Actor User to view the users tied to the event.

Try logging in to your Tableau Server and accessing a view. Afterwards, refresh the view in Tableau
Desktop (press F5) to see the live connection update.
 Backup & Restore
Backup
The last thing we will show you is how to backup and restore your Tableau Server.
It’s important to back up your server frequently in case of a disaster that causes a loss of data—with a
recent backup, you can always restore your Tableau Server instance, but there’s not much that can be
done if you don’t have a backup.
Let’s take a backup now of our server.

Open the command prompt.

Navigate to the Tableau Server bin folder. CD “C:\Program Files\Tableau\Tableau Server\8.2\bin”

Type tabadmin backup yourbackupname (e.g. tabadmin backup myServerBackup)

In this case, your name will serve as the name of the backup file.

This will create a ‘hot backup’ which includes some log files.
If you want to create a clean backup, you will want to run the tabadmin cleanup command when the
server is running, and once again, when the server is stopped prior to running the tabadmin backup
command. This will clean up log files and other unneeded files from the database.

Make sure you move the backup file (a .tsbak file in your Tableau Server bin folder) to a safe location in
case of disaster—preferably on a different machine or hard drive.
Restore
To restore Tableau Server using a backup file:
Type tabadmin stop.
Type tabadmin restore [path to backup (.tsbak) file]
(e.g. tabadmin restore c:\backups\myTableauServerbackup.tsbak)