Tableau Questions

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Which Tableau Product do I need?

  • Tableau Desktop (Creator license): the full licensed version of the software used to create visualisations and other content, such as dashboards and data sources.
  • Tableau Desktop Free trial version: upon registration with Tableau you can receive a 14-day trial to evaluate the Tableau Desktop software.
  • Tableau Desktop Public: free to download, acts as Tableau Creator Desktop, limited in the number of data connectors, total data size and ways of sharing.
  • Web-edit view on Tableau Server: a free but limited way to explore data a Tableau Server Site. A developer needs to create content (dashboard/workbook/data source) in a Tableau Desktop and then publish it to the Tableau Server. Special web-edit permissions must also be applied to a viewer of the content to grant the web-editing permissions or to connect to a data source and create their own visualisations. No need to download any software, all manipulations are done via the web-browser.

How to get Tableau and/or a Tableau license?

Contact OTS Statewide Data Analytics at OTSAppDMStatewideAnalytics@la.gov. A member of the team will work with you to gather the necessary information to submit a request to provide state Tableau resources to you.

How to get Tableau installed on your desktop or laptop?

Submit a Customer Service Ticket Portal: otssupport.la.gov or by calling locally to 225-219-6900 or Toll Free to 844-219-6900. Download links can be found below:

How to be on your department's statewide server and Tableau Site?

Contact your chain of command and submit a request to the Site Administrator for your department's Site. If you do not know who the Site Administrator(s) for your Site is, please contact OTS Statewide Data Analytics at OTSAppDMStatewideAnalytics@la.gov.

How to authenticate once Tableau is installed and you are a creator on the server?

See the Install Tableau page for in-depth instructions for installing Tableau.

What are Tableau Site Roles?

Viewer - Viewers have the ability to interact by subscribing to views, downloading as images and downloading as summary data. A Viewer cannot connect to data, create, edit or publish content or set data alerts.

Explorer - Explorers have the ability to browse and interact with views. Explorers can create data driven alerts, subscribe to content, and also connect to Tableau published data sources and workbooks in the web authoring environment for ad-hoc queries, but cannot save their work.

Explorer (Can Publish) - An Explorer (Can Publish) can use all the interaction features of an Explorer plus being able to publish from the web. Explorers (Can Publish) can edit and save existing workbooks, but cannot save new standalone data sources from data connections embedded in workbooks, an cannot connect to external data and create new data sources.

Creator – Creators are able to build and publish flows, connect to Tableau or external data in the browser, connect to data sources and workbooks, and use interaction features on published views. Creators have the ability to connect to Tableau Prep or Desktop, publish by uploading/saving and downloading flows, workbooks and data sources.

Site Administrator Creator – This is the highest level of access for Tableau Cloud. Unrestricted access to content as described above, but at the site level. Connect to Tableau or external data in the browser, Tableau Desktop, or Tableau Prep; create new data sources; build and publish content. On Tableau Server, server administrators can determine whether or not to allow site administrators to manage users and assign site roles and site membership. By default, on Tableau Server, and always on Tableau Cloud, site administrators are allowed these capabilities.

For more in depth descriptions or information on the capabilities of each role, please refer to https://www.tableau.com/.