Manage Tableau Mobile Data on Devices
Understanding cached previews and metadata
When mobile users interact with content on Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, the server processes the underlying business data, and the Tableau Mobile app renders it for display. To display content more quickly, Tableau Mobile caches the following content on a user's device:
-
Previews of workbooks and views set as start pages, favorite workbooks and views, as well as the workbooks and views that are in favorite collections
-
Metadata about favorite workbooks and views, such as name and the time of last synchronization with the server
This content is encrypted along with other sensitive data by Tableau Mobile. For more information see, Data encryption on mobile devices.
For further protection, locally stored data is completely deleted whenever:
-
A user signs out of the server or uninstalls the Tableau Mobile app.
-
You remove a user account from Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, and the user tries to sign in with Tableau Mobile.
For maximum control, we recommend managing devices with an MDM or MAM system, which let you delete the Tableau Mobile app along with all of its offline content.
Disable offline previews for a site
By default, offline previews are enabled for all sites. Tableau administrators can disable offline previews for specific sites, preventing workbooks and views from being stored on users’ devices. When offline previews are disabled, Tableau Mobile displays previews as low-resolution thumbnail images, obscuring details about data.
-
In a web browser, sign in to your server and site as an administrator.
-
From the navigation pane, select Settings.
-
Under the settings for Tableau Mobile, uncheck Enable offline previews.
Note: Individual users can also disable offline previews in the app settings(Link opens in a new window).
Optimize client-side rendering with Tableau Server
If you're a Tableau Server administrator, you can optimize performance by controlling when views are rendered on the server instead of mobile devices. The choice depends on the complexity of a view, which is determined by the number of marks, rows, columns, and more. If a view is less complex, it's faster for mobile devices to render the view. If a view is more complex, it's faster to send a request to Tableau Server and take advantage of the server's greater computing power.
As a server administrator, you can configure when client-side rendering happens on mobile devices by adjusting the complexity threshold. For example, you might lower the threshold for mobile devices if you notice that views display slowly on them. Or, you might increase the threshold to reduce the number of requests to Tableau Server.
By default, the complexity threshold for mobile devices is 60. To adjust the complexity threshold, enter the following in the command-line interface for Tableau Services Manager:
tsm configuration set -k vizqlserver.browser.render_threshold_mobile -v [new value]
For example, to change the mobile threshold to 40, you would enter the following command:
tsm configuration set -k vizqlserver.browser.render_threshold_mobile -v 40
For more information, see these topics in Tableau Server Help: