Maximizing Tableau Server

Maximizing Tableau Server

by Patrick Sarsfield, Brandi Locker
Released October 2021
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781801071130

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Book description

Enhance the way you use Tableau Server’s analytical tools by learning how to manage content to drive user engagement

Key Features

  • Understand how to quickly get connected, start publishing workbooks, and adjust basic settings
  • Navigate the Tableau Server interface to filter and locate content, customize viewing options, and automate various tasks
  • Learn best practices for improving the efficiency of workbooks and data sources

Book Description

Tableau Server is a business intelligence application that provides a centralized location to store, edit, share, and collaborate on content, such as dashboards and curated data sources. This book gets you up and running with Tableau Server to help you increase end-user engagement for your published work as well as reduce or eliminate redundant tasks.

You’ll explore Tableau Server's structure and how to get started by connecting, publishing content, and navigating the software interface. Next, you’ll learn when and how to update the settings of your content at various levels to best utilize Tableau Server’s features. You’ll understand how to interact with the Tableau Server interface to locate, sort, filter, manage and customize content. Later, the book shows you how to leverage other valuable features that enable you and your audience to share, download, and interact with content on Tableau Server. As you progress, you’ll cover principles to increase the performance of your published content. All along, the book shows you how to navigate, interact with, and use Tableau Server with the help of engaging examples and best practices shared by recognized Tableau professionals.

By the end of this Tableau book, you’ll have a solid understanding of how to use Tableau Server to manage content, automate tasks, and increase end-user engagement.

What you will learn

  • Get well-versed in Tableau Server s interface to quickly and easily access essential content
  • Explore the different types of content and navigate through the project hierarchy quickly
  • Understand how to connect, publish, manage, and modify content on Tableau Server
  • Discover how to share content and collaborate with others
  • Automate tedious tasks by creating custom views, alerts, subscriptions, and data refresh schedules
  • Build data visualizations using Web Edit
  • Understand how to monitor disparate metrics on multiple dashboards

Who this book is for

This Tableau software book is for BI developers, data analysts, and everyday users who have access to Tableau Server and possess basic web navigation skills. No prior experience with Tableau Server is required.

Table of contents

  1. Maximizing Tableau Server
  2. Foreword
  3. Contributors
  4. About the authors
  5. Acknowledgements
  6. About the reviewer
  7. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
    4. Download the color images
    5. Conventions used
    6. Get in touch
    7. Share Your Thoughts
  8. Section 1: Getting Started with Tableau Server
  9. Chapter 1: What is Tableau Server?
    1. What is Tableau Server and why should I care?
    2. Examining Tableau's basic structure
      1. Data sources
      2. Tableau Desktop
      3. Tableau Server
      4. End users
    3. Understanding what a site is on Tableau Server
    4. Understanding licenses, site roles, and permissions
      1. License types
      2. Site roles
      3. Permissions
      4. How licenses, site roles, and permissions tie together
    5. Summary
  10. Chapter 2: How to Connect and Publish to Tableau Server
    1. How to connect and publish to Tableau Server?
      1. Connecting to Tableau Server using a web browser
      2. Connecting to Tableau Server from Tableau Desktop and publishing content
    2. How to connect and publish to Tableau Public?
      1. How to create a Tableau Public profile?
      2. How to connect and publish content from Tableau Desktop to Tableau Public?
    3. Summary
  11. Section 2: Navigating and Customizing the Tableau Server Interface
  12. Chapter 3: The Tableau Server Navigation Pane
    1. Introducing the Tableau Server Navigation Pane
    2. Examining the Home page
      1. The welcome banner
      2. Home page content
    3. Examining the Explore page
      1. The content type menu
      2. Contents Toolbar
      3. How is content organized?
    4. Examining the Favorites page
      1. Ways to favorite content
      2. Your Favorites page
    5. Examining the Recents page
    6. Examining the Shared with Me page
    7. Examining the Recommendations page
    8. Summary
  13. Chapter 4: Tableau Server Top Toolbar
    1. Understanding the top toolbar
    2. Examining Quick Search
      1. Search Operators
      2. Search Attributes
    3. Examining the Help Menu
    4. Examining Notifications
    5. Examining My Content and Account Settings
      1. My Content
      2. My Account Settings
      3. Make This My Start Page
      4. Switch User
    6. Summary
  14. Chapter 5: Filtering and Sorting Content
    1. Understanding the Content Toolbar
    2. Examining the New menu
      1. Creating a project
      2. Creating a workbook
      3. Upload Workbook
    3. Examining the Select All option
      1. Clear All
      2. Selecting individual items
      3. Actions
    4. Examining the Content Type menu
    5. Examining the Sort By menu
    6. Examining view modes
      1. Grid View
      2. List View
      3. Choosing between Grid View and List View
    7. Examining Filtered Search
      1. Search box within the Filtered Search pane
      2. Other common options in Filtered Search
      3. Filtered Search for specific content types
      4. Removing applied filters from a filtered search
    8. Summary
  15. Section 3: Managing Content on Tableau Server
  16. Chapter 6: Navigating Content Pages in Tableau Server
    1. Navigating a workbook
      1. Examining the Views page
      2. Examining the Data Sources page
      3. Examining the Connected Metrics page
      4. Examining the Custom Views page
      5. Examining the Extract Refreshes page
      6. Examining the Subscriptions page
    2. Navigating a data source in Tableau Server
      1. Examining Connections
      2. Examining Extract Refreshes
      3. Examining Connected Workbooks
    3. Navigating a metric in Tableau Server
    4. Summary
  17. Chapter 7: What is in the More Actions (…) Menu
    1. Examining the More actions ellipsis
    2. Examining Edit Workbook/Edit View
    3. Examining Share
      1. Share with people
      2. Share using a link
    4. Examining Download
    5. Examining Tag
      1. Adding a Tag
      2. Finding a tag
      3. Removing a tag
    6. Examining Rename
    7. Examining Move
    8. Examining Permissions
    9. Examining Change Owner
    10. Examining Revision History
    11. Examining Delete
    12. Examining Who Has Seen This View?
    13. Examining Edit Connection
    14. Examining Refresh Extracts
      1. Refresh Now
      2. Schedule a Refresh
    15. Examining Tabbed Views
    16. Summary
  18. Chapter 8: Interacting with Views on Tableau Server
    1. Interacting with Views on Tableau Server
    2. Examining View Data
    3. Examining the Undo, Redo, Revert, Refresh, and Pause options
    4. Examining Device Layouts and Data Sources
      1. Device Layouts
      2. Data Sources
    5. Examining the favorites menu
    6. Examining Custom Views
      1. Creating a custom view
      2. Viewing and managing Custom Views
    7. Examining alerts
      1. Creating an alert
      2. Managing alerts
      3. Adding yourself to an alert
    8. Examining metrics
      1. Viewing metrics
      2. Creating metrics
      3. Troubleshooting metrics
    9. Examining subscriptions
      1. Creating a subscription
      2. Changing or unsubscribing from a subscription
    10. Examining the Web Edit button
      1. Server permissions for web editing
      2. Web Edit basic layout
      3. Tableau Server web editing versus Tableau Desktop
    11. Examining the Share button
      1. Share with people
      2. Share using a link
      3. Copy Embed Code
    12. Examining the Download button
    13. Examining the Comments button
    14. Summary
  19. Section 4: Final Thoughts
  20. Chapter 9: Tableau Server Best Practices
    1. Examining row-level security
      1. Manually creating a user filter
      2. Creating a calculation using a security field
    2. Leveraging naming conventions
      1. General rules to make good naming conventions
      2. Things to try to limit or avoid
    3. Utilizing published data sources
      1. Formatting data prior to publishing
      2. Naming and describing data sources
    4. Refreshing your data
    5. Improving performance
      1. Analyzing performance in Tableau Desktop
      2. Optimizing the data source
      3. Optimizing workbook and dashboard designs
    6. Summary
  21. Chapter 10: Conclusion
    1. What you have learned
    2. Why and how to get involved with the Tableau community
      1. Why get involved?
      2. How to get involved
    3. Where to find data for personal projects
    4. Additional resources
      1. Blogs
      2. Books
      3. Podcasts
      4. YouTube channels
      5. Webinars
    5. Thank you
    6. Why subscribe?
  22. Other Books You May Enjoy
    1. Packt is searching for authors like you
    2. Share Your Thoughts

Product information

  • Title: Maximizing Tableau Server
  • Author(s): Patrick Sarsfield, Brandi Locker
  • Release date: October 2021
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781801071130