Chapter 3: The Tableau Server Navigation Pane

You can think of the Tableau Server Navigation Pane as your constant companion, there to assist you as you navigate through the Tableau Server interface, quickly helping you find what you need.

In this chapter, you will learn how to access your Home page, explore all the content available to you, save your favorite or most frequented items, find your most recently visited content, and view items that have been shared with you. Content on Tableau Server comes in the form of projects, workbooks, views, and data sources. In Tableau Server, projects are created by a server administrator to help organize and contain related content when it is uploaded. A workbook is a view or collection of views. A view can be a dashboard, worksheet, or story. A data source is a data connection that has been published to Tableau Server.

By the end of this chapter, you will know how to utilize the most common options on your Navigation Pane:

• Introducing...

Introducing the Tableau Server Navigation Pane

The Navigation Pane appears on the left-hand side of your Tableau Server window and provides a convenient list of options that are linked to your most frequently sought-after content. The Navigation Pane, or sidebar, will stay with you as you explore Tableau Server. It will only disappear when you choose to open a view, dashboard, or story so that your screen space is maximized for the content that you want to see. The following screenshot shows an example of the Navigation Pane within the Tableau Server window and identifies the available shortcuts:

Figure 3.1 – The Tableau Server Navigation Pane

Important Note

Please note that you may see additional options, depending on the settings that have been established by your server administrators or company.

In this book, we will review the most common options available in the Navigation Pane:

• Collapse/Expand Arrow: Appears as a directional arrow...

Examining the Home page

The Home page is the first thing you see when you open Tableau Server. It is designed to assist users by providing quick access to their most valuable content, which it does by prominently displaying much of what they may need in a single location. To return to this page from another server location, simply click the link identified by the house icon and the word Home, which can be found on the Navigation Pane on the left-hand side of your Tableau Server window.

Clicking the house icon will open your Home page, where you will see a welcome banner at the top of your screen with the available page content displayed below it. Your content appears in the form of thumbnail images with labels directly below. Selecting a thumbnail will immediately open that item and transport you to its location on Tableau Server. We will learn more about this in the next section when we discuss the Explore page.

If you have never used Tableau Server before, you will not have...

Examining the Explore page

The Explore page allows you to browse all the content that you have been granted access to on Tableau Server, including content that's been published by other users. This page contains several unique filtering and sorting options to help you browse and understand how things are organized. Let's start by looking at the content type menu.

The content type menu

The Explore page features a filter at the top left-hand side of the page that allows you to select what type of content you would like to see. This filter is referred to as the content type menu. The following screenshot shows the commonly available options that you can choose from when you click this filter:

Figure 3.10 – Content filter on the Explore page

This filter allows you to see and browse everything available to you on Tableau Server, broken out by type. It will also indicate the quantity of each type of content available to the right of its menu...

Examining the Favorites page

Your Favorites page enables you to create and maintain a list of shortcuts to your favorite or most frequently viewed content on Tableau Server. This page is located on the Navigation Pane on the left-hand side of your screen and can be identified by the star icon and the word Favorites. Your Favorites page starts empty and gradually fills in as you select and add content you find important or valuable.

Ways to favorite content

Any content on Tableau Server where you see a star icon can be added to a list of your personal favorites. To add your most frequently used or viewed content to your Favorites page, simply click the star icon where you see it available.

You can find a favorites star in three locations:

• In the header of an open view:

Figure 3.20 – Favorites page star in the header

• In a grid view:

Figure 3.21 – Favorites page star in a grid view

Dashboard...

Examining the Recents page

As its name suggests, the Recents page shows the views and metrics you have recently opened. This page is located on the Navigation Pane, on the left-hand side of your screen, and can be identified by the analog clock icon and the word Recents. Your Recents page defaults to showing the views sorted by what you have most recently looked at in the top left corner of the page.

The Contents Toolbar options, shown in the following figure, at the top of your Recents page will appear very similar to what you have seen on other pages on Tableau Server:

Figure 3.24 – Recents page in a grid view

Dashboard images created by Chimdi Nwosu and Mark Bradbourne

A more in-depth analysis of all available content toolbar options on Tableau Server can be found in Chapter 5, Filtering and Sorting Content.

Here's a quick overview of the Recents page's Contents Toolbar options:

• Select All: Clicking this option allows you...

Examining the Shared with Me page

The Shared with Me page contains items that other users have created and shared with you on Tableau Server. This page conveniently stores this shared content in a single location for you to find when you need it. This is helpful because it is easy to forget to bookmark content that is sent to you. When another Tableau Server user shares an item, you will receive an email with a link to that item on the server. Content on the Shared with Me page will show the corresponding thumbnail or icon, the title, and information about when it was shared. We will discuss how you, too, can share content with others in Chapter 8, Interacting with Views on Tableau Server.

It is important to note that even though an item has been shared with you, the permissions rules will have to be adjusted for you to be able to view and interact with the content. The process of altering or adjusting permissions will vary by organization. We will discuss this in more detail in...

Examining the Recommendations page

The Recommendations page contains a compilation of content that has been suggested based on your viewing habits on your server site. You may also see content being recommended that is popular, or trending, on the site. You can hover over a recommended view for additional information, such as why it was recommended, the workbook's name, the owner's name, and the modified date. An example of this page is shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 3.27 – Recommendations page

Dashboard images created by Chimdi Nwosu, Mark Bradbourne, and Luther Flagstad

You'll notice an icon in the top right corner of each thumbnail view image on the Recommendations page. A trending icon appears as an image of a line graph moving upward because it has been recently trending, while a for you icon appears as a cartoon headshot and is shown because people with similar viewing habits to yours looked at this.

Note

Server...

Summary

In this chapter, we examined the Tableau Server Navigation Pane, and you learned how to utilize its most common options. We discussed how the Home page serves as a quick way to provide you with much of your desired content in one place. Next, we reviewed how to browse content using the Explore page. You then learned how to mark and organize your most frequently used items on the Favorites page. We then discussed how to use the Recents page to find the content you have most recently viewed. Lastly, we looked at where to discover and interact with content that has been shared with you by other users.

Gaining a basic understanding of how to interact with this sidebar and its contents is relatively straightforward. However, by completing this chapter, you now have a much deeper understanding of the Navigation Pane than just the basics. You know how and why you would want to use the options available. The knowledge you have gained here will help you maximize your use of Tableau...