When managed effectively, Tableau Server is robust and delivers performance at reasonable cost. But often, when not actively managed, Tableau Server environments suffer from two issues: the accumulation of outdated and abandoned dashboards, and wasted money spent on user licenses for inactive users. These issues hurt the performance of the system and decrease the value that the business gets from its investment. As a result, admins often spend significant time managing users and content to reduce operational costs and improve performance.
Automatic License Management
Manager for Tableau can drastically reduce manual tasks and unnecessary expenses by enabling Tableau Server administrators to automatically identify and deactivate or change user licenses that meet the organization’s criteria for inactivity or underutilization. Similarly, the extension can automatically activate new licensed users and update a user’s role based on activity history.
Detailed reports provide administrators with a list of inactive or underutilized licenses and opportunities for cost savings.
Automatic Content Management
Administrators can set up dynamic notifications that are triggered when dashboards are getting little to no use, or when they may be negatively impacting system performance with unnecessary querying. Manager can free up the resources taken up by such content by automatically migrating and archiving dashboards that qualify as stale or abandoned under the administrator-defined ruleset.
These features can greatly reduce otherwise time-consuming manual tasks, such as reassigning and migrating dashboards upon the owner’s departure from the organization.
Display Notifications on Tableau Server
Tableau Server administrators can handle all related communications, including direct communications and automated outage notifications directly on Tableau Server. And if Tableau Server should ever go down, Tableau Manager will be available for you and your users to see statuses and communicate.
Extended User Options
Manager for Tableau enables the customization of Tableau Server features to better suit business-specific use cases and user needs.
For example, Manager can give users the option to change their license type — within limits set by the administrator. It can also make it easy for any user to contact the owner of a dashboard. This is helpful if the user has questions or needs to report an issue — this feature helps increase productivity and reduce downtime. Manager also greatly expands and streamlines dashboard exporting with flexible settings for scope, filters and more.
Manager can function as a platform for deep and extensive customization. At its core, the extension is an enterprise-class extension for managing and patching Servers that programmatically enables a wide range of options for safe integration with Tableau Server.
Examples of custom features
- Legacy content and license management: users leaving the organization may leave behind several dashboards — which normally need to be manually migrated and/or archived before their license can be deactivated. Manager can automate this process.
- Performance and usage monitoring and alerting.
- Chargeback calculation: Manager can accurately report resource
utilization and spending for user groups and departments.
