Chapter 9. Publish and Interact in Tableau Server

Time to share your work! This chapter is the culmination of everything you've learned since the beginning of the book. It's also the first chapter where you'll use a tool other than Tableau Desktop: Tableau Server/Online.

Note

As Tableau Server and Tableau Online are almost the same product (learn more in Chapter 2, The Tableau Core), we will use the name Tableau Server for both products throughout this book. 

Thanks to Tableau Server, users can connect to new or published Data Sources to create new analyses, and open published Workbooks to interact with them. In this chapter, our main focuses are:

• Introduction to Tableau Server 
• Tableau Server Contents
• Publishing and modifying Contents
• Interacting with published Contents 
• Device layout

Note

This book doesn't cover Tableau Server installation and configuration. It's a technical aspect that requires you to work with your IT team. You can find all the useful information and guidance for installation...

Introduction to Tableau Server

Tableau Server is an online tool made for sharing Workbooks and Data Sources. Usually, only a few people use Tableau Desktop to build Data Sources and Workbooks. They can publish their work on Tableau Server, making it available to many users who can access them using Tableau Server on the web. There are two ways of using Tableau Server:

• In a browser, to access the Tableau Server web page and interact with published content (Data Sources, Workbooks, and Views)
• In Tableau Desktop, to publish Data Sources and Workbooks, or connect to published Data Sources and open published Workbooks

To connect to Tableau Server on a browser, you have to write the URL of your server and enter your login and password. If you're using Tableau Online, the URL is https://sso.online.tableau.com.

Note

Tableau Server can have multiple sites. Each site is a different environment with different Users, Groups, and Content. 

Once you're logged in, you can access the Tableau Server Content page...

Tableau Server contents

There are four different types of content on Tableau Server: 

• Projects: The highest level; it is like a folder. You can only create new projects from the web. A project can contain other Sub-Projects, Workbooks, and Data Sources.
• Workbooks: Either created on Tableau Desktop and published here, or directly created in Tableau Server. Each Workbook is composed of one or multiple Views.
• Views: All the different Worksheets, Dashboards, and Stories in the Workbooks.
• Data Sources: Created on Tableau Desktop and published here. You can use them to build new analyses directly on the web.

Tableau Server has two ways of displaying Content. Since the 2018.3 version, the default way is called Mixed Content and shows different types of Content in the same place.

As you can see in the following screenshot, in the Sales project, there is one other Sub-Project, one Workbook, and one Data Source, all displayed in the same place:

The Sales project dashboard

Before Tableau Server 2018.3, the...

Publishing and modifying contents

On Tableau Desktop, you can connect to Tableau Server from the Sign In... option on the Server menu, highlighted in the following screenshot:

Then, you can publish the Data Source and the Workbook individually. The most common way to work with Tableau Server is first to publish the Data Source (usually an Extract), then the Workbook.

Why and how to publish a data source

Tableau Desktop is the only tool that allows you to connect to a Dataset, create an Extract, publish it to Tableau Server, and schedule an automatic refresh. Publishing a Data Source offers multiple advantages:

• All the customization (aliases, default properties, hidden or renamed fields, and so on) is saved. If you, or another Tableau Server User, uses the published Data Sources, all the customization work is already done.
• All the newly created fields (Calculated Field, Sets, Groups, Parameters, Bins, and so on) are also saved. All Workbooks based on the same published Data Source use the same...

Interacting with published Contents

Publishing your Workbooks and Data Sources presents many advantages. Tableau Server users can interact with your Content, and you can interact with someone else's Content.

Let's start by discovering all the options you have when you open a published Workbook on Tableau. 

Interacting with published Workbooks

When you click on a Workbook on Tableau Server, you can see all its Views (Worksheets, Dashboards, and Stories). Then, when you click on a View, Tableau Server opens it in reader mode. You cannot modify it, but you can use the Filters, Highlighters, Parameters, and Actions, and see the Tooltips.

Above the visualization, there is a special toolbar with some new features, only available on Tableau Server. The left part, not very interesting even if useful, allows you to undo, redo, or revert all your actions, and refresh or pause the Data Source. You won't use that part much. However, the right part of the toolbar, displayed in the following screenshot, is...

Device layout

On Tableau Desktop, you can create device layouts for your Dashboard. Then, depending on the device used to open the Workbook on Tableau Server, the right layout is automatically chosen. 

Note

Device Layouts also works when publishing a Dashboard on Tableau Public.

For example, here's a Dashboard displayed on a computer:

Here is the same Dashboard if you open it on a mobile:

As you can see, the ideas and insights are visible in both layouts, but are adapted for each device.  

Note

Are you interested in beer consumption or do you want to learn how to build this visualization? All my Tableau Public Workbooks are downloadable: https://public.tableau.com/profile/guillevin#!/.

The section is divided into two parts. First, we'll see how to create a Device layout, then how to preview the results on Tableau Desktop.

Creating a Device layout

To create a Device layout, first click on the Device Preview button on a Dashboard to open the Device layout toolbar:

On this toolbar, you need to do the...

Summary

Now that you've learned how to use Tableau Server, you have a complete view of what Tableau can do as a data visualization and analysis tool. We looked at connecting data to Tableau Desktop, building your Data Source, Worksheets and Dashboards, and finally publishing all your work online for you and other users to interact with. What a journey!

This chapter was the last piece of the puzzle in understanding how to use Tableau. You started by understanding what Tableau Server is and what kind of content you can find in it. Then, you saw how to publish your Content, modify it, and interact with it on the web. Finally, you learned how to build specific Device layouts so any user, with any device, can see your visualization correctly. 

This summary may sound like the end. What else could be left to see now? A lot! In the next chapters, we'll get our hands back on Tableau Desktop to discover many other crucial and advanced features. Creating Parameters, using the Analytics built-in tools...