Tableau Hacks: Use Tableau Server to Fit Your Workflow by Miranda Osterheld and Ann Ho is a TC19 session not only for server administrators but Tableau desktop users as well. Miranda and Ann cover some pretty cool tricks on subscription services with bursting of reports, personal sandboxes and custom tableau landing pages to make it easier for end users to find content on server.
Many of you may be wondering, what is a personal sandbox on server. This is a place where desktop and server web edit approved developers (publishers) can save their content with proper security in place. Tableau Server security is based on Projects with various levels of security options for publishing content as well as workbook and data source access. Around minute 14 of the video, Miranda shows us a quick trick on how to set up a single project for ALL developers to publish their workbooks eliminating the need to set up separate projects for each individual user. The set up is so easy it literally takes one minute and its secure! Once the publisher is ready to share their content, the workbook can be moved to an appropriate project for a wider audience.

There’s been a lot of buzz about landing pages on Twitter lately. Landing pages can be great for guiding users through various content on Tableau Server. They can be designed as a single place for users to connect to the views available to them while also providing context about each of the dashboards. If you’re interested in learning how to build a Landing Page, around minute 22, Miranda demonstrates how to create a page that links to each of the dashboards URLs with the postgres database. If your are interested in other landing page styles, Eric Balash @ReadySetData has some great examples on this Tableau Public Page https://public.tableau.com/profile/eric.balash#!/.
Have you ever had the need to email managers the same dashboard but each manager is responsible for different regions? What do you do? Do you create multiple versions of the same dashboards so they can subscribe individually? In the last ten minutes, Ann shows us how to burst dashboards based on user-role security filtering through subscriptions. She demonstrates step by step on how to set up the user-role filtering in Tableau Desktop, publish the workbook on server and turn on subscriptions for the users. Once set up, each manager receives an email with the same dashboard but a personalized view for their region only!
I watched this session as part of my #Data19Challenge because not only am I a Tableau Developer but I also manage certain aspects of Tableau Server. This 30 minute session is the most informative session I’ve watched about Tableau Server. It’s not dry and the tips are easy to implement with a little creativity. This is a good session for developers and server administrators.
To watch the video now, click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuF2VeO9PAY&t=731s