Tableau’s product ecosystem has evolved over the past ten years but remains simple. Desktop is for discovery, design, and interactive consumption. Server is for scaling your deployment to an audience for consumption. However, Tableau has started to blur the lines between Desktop and Server by adding design capabilities into Server. Tableau Online is a cloud-based deployment of Server. Tableau Mobile provides optimized apps for consuming Server reports on iOS and Android devices. Tableau Reader is a free desktop application that enables information consumers to interact with Tableau packaged workbooks. And Tableau Public is a free cloud publishing platform that anyone can use to analyze data and publish interactive dashboards.

Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop comes in two flavors: Professional and Personal editions. The Personal edition only provides connections to files that exist on your desktop, and you can only share files that have been saved as packaged workbooks with people who are using Tableau Reader.

Professional provides the full suite of connectivity options and provides publishing options for Tableau Server, Tableau Online, or Tableau Public. See Appendix B for the current list of connection options.

Tableau Server

If you produce a large number of workbooks that have to be updated regularly or you have a large number of people consuming your work, Tableau Server will save you time. It allows your audience to view and interact with your work via a web browser. Tableau Server enhances data security and scalability as well. And Server provides a means for embedded live, interactive dashboards and visualizations in an existing web portal. Server will also automatically refresh data extracts that have been published to Tableau Server.

Server is licensed in two ways: named user or the processor cores in your server. Named-user licensing makes sense in smaller deployments when fewer than 150 people need access to Tableau Reports. In larger deployments with dynamic access requirements, core licensing is more cost-effective and reduces administrative time because the license is defined by the number of cores in your database server’s processor.

Tableau Server provides enhanced security and permits users to customize their access to reports within boundaries defined by the server administrator. Tableau Server’s interface provides users with tools for finding, organizing, and commenting on reports. Server enables users to create subscriptions that provide email notification when updated reports are published. It also provides administrators with the capability to monitor access and monitor system performance. Details regarding installation, access, and management of Tableau Server are covered in Chapters 11 and 12. Tableau’s native automation tools are covered in Chapter 13.

Tableau Online

More people want to eliminate the need for procuring, installing, and managing hardware at one or more of their own business locations (on premise). As a result, cloud solutions are becoming more accepted, and Tableau Online is Tableau Software’s cloud-based server option. Tableau Online can be turned on quickly and is accessed via password. It offers a hassle-free way to publish workbooks for others to interact with via the web.

Tableau Public

Tableau Public is a free, hosted web service that can be used to publish Tableau Reports on the web. Commonly used content management systems such as WordPress, Tumblr, and Typepad are supported. Tableau’s licensed desktop editions can also publish content to Tableau Public. Tableau also offers a free Public desktop edition for creating and publishing reports. With the release of Tableau V9.0, Tableau Software increased the capabilities of Tableau Public. While you can still only publish your work to Tableau Public’s server, your storage limits have been increased, and you’re given more control over how your work is consumed:

• Storage space on Tableau Public is now 10GB per named user.
• The data row limit is now 10 million records.
• You can now prevent downloading of the source workbook through a settings adjustment in your account.

While Tableau Public isn’t a substitute for Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server, this free product gives you the ability to learn Tableau Desktop (through the Tableau Public Desktop) and share your work with people using Tableau Public.

Tableau Reader

Think of Tableau Reader as you would Adobe Reader. It’s a free desktop application that allows you to consume Tableau Desktop reports that have been saved as packaged workbooks. This might be a good way to share analysis with business partners who don’t have access to Tableau Desktop.

Tableau Mobile

Tableau Mobile is available for iOS. While the Tableau Mobile app isn’t required for accessing workbooks published on Tableau Server, these apps provide an optimized environment for consuming workbooks. And (provided your server administrator had enabled web-editing) you can create new views and new calculations from your mobile device. At the time of this writing, the iOS app is available only on the iPad. This facility will be provided for Android later in 2015.

Project Elastic

Project Elastic is a new product under development that will be a separate application for authoring, editing, and consuming data totally within a mobile application. As this book is going to press Tableau has not provided a specific release date. The “whisper” date is some time in 2016.

Power Tools for Tableau

InterWorks has been a Tableau partner since 2008, helping many businesses, government entities, and educational intuitions deploy Tableau Software by creating non-standard automation, providing performance-tuning solutions, and offering other customizations that are not part of Tableau Software’s standard design.

Power Tools for Tableau was developed by InterWorks to address the most common client requests with a standardized set of add-on tools.

Power tools for Tableau consists of the following applications.

Workbook Tools

• Workbook Merge
• Style Management
• Data Source Auditing
• Best Practice Analyzer
• Performance Analyzer

Workbook SDK

Workbook SDK is a well-documented set of API tools that enable batch automation and programmatic access to Tableau workbooks.

Enterprise Deployment

Enterprise Deployment is a toolset to add, edit, or remove Tableau environments; manage transformation; and provide guided configuration.

Remote for Tableau

There are also mobile apps for iOS and Android that allow server administrators to manage Tableau Server remotely via a tablet computer or cell phone. For more information on these applications, see http://powertoolsfortableau.com/ or email [email protected].