Tableau Cloud Help

Tableau Pulse provides users with personalised insights about the metrics that matter to them, directly in their flow of work. Users with a Creator, Site Administrator Explorer or Explorer (can publish) site role can add metric definitions, and all users can follow metrics to discover insights and learn about changes to the data. For information about definitions, metrics, and how to create them, see Create Metrics with Tableau Pulse. For information about how viewers interact with metrics, see Explore Metrics with Tableau Pulse.

Users who follow metrics receive regular digests with insights about their data by email or in Slack. Tableau Pulse allows users who don't regularly access Tableau to understand their data without leaving the places they normally work. If these users want to learn more, they can visit a metric on Tableau Cloud to engage in guided, self-service data analysis and see how different factors impact their data.

Deploy Tableau Pulse for your site

The site setting to deploy Tableau Pulse is off by default. When you deploy Tableau Pulse, you can choose to turn it on for a single group of users or for all users on your site. You might want to have a controlled roll out for Tableau Pulse and turn it on for a single group so that a subset of users can explore and evaluate it before you make it available to your entire organisation. To learn how to create a user group for Tableau Pulse, see Create a Group and Add Users to It.

To deploy Tableau Pulse, visit the settings page for your site.

1. From the main Tableau Cloud navigation menu, select Settings.
2. Under Tableau Pulse Deployment, select Turn on Tableau Pulse.
3. Choose whether to turn on Tableau Pulse for all users or for a specified group.
4. If you choose to limit Tableau Pulse to a group, select the group.
5. Select Save.

Users without access will get a message informing them if they visit a Tableau Pulse URL. Also, if you limit Tableau Pulse to a group, that group is the only one available when you search to add followers, even if those same users are part of a different group.

API availability of Tableau Pulse

Limiting Tableau Pulse to a specified group isn't supported at the external API level. If the site setting is turned off entirely, the API won’t allow users to access Tableau Pulse. If the site setting for Tableau Pulse is on, all users will be able to access it in situations where it's being called through the API, such as in embedded scenarios, regardless of whether the setting limits it to a specified group. For more information about using the API for Tableau Pulse, see Embed Tableau Pulse and Tableau Pulse REST API Methods.

Stop digests that persist for users without access

After you initially deploy Tableau Pulse, the services that query data sources and send metric digests continue to run whether the site setting is on or off. The site setting controls whether Tableau Pulse appears in the navigation menu and whether users are able to access the Tableau Pulse home page and individual metric pages.

Because the services for Tableau Pulse continue to run, any users who previously had access and followed metrics will receive digests for those metrics, even if you restrict access to a group that they aren’t in or remove those users from the group with access to Tableau Pulse. If these users attempt to open the links to metrics that are sent in digests, they'll get a notice that they don’t have access to Tableau Pulse, and they'll be unable to unfollow these metrics.

To prevent users who can’t access Tableau Pulse from receiving digests, remove those users from the metrics that they follow. Do this before you turn off Tableau Pulse or limit it to a smaller set of users, so these users don’t receive digests with links to metrics they can’t access.

Set up your site

As a Tableau administrator, you can help your users get the most from Tableau Pulse. Before your users get started, check that the data required for metrics is available and turn on optional features.

• Verify that there are published data sources on your site for users to create metrics from. For information about the specific data requirements for metrics, see Data source requirements for metric definitions. To make sure that users can access the data, see Understand governance for Tableau Pulse.
• Connect your Tableau site with Slack, if you want your users to receive Tableau Pulse digests in Slack. For more information, see Integrate Tableau with a Slack Workspace.
• Turn on Tableau AI, if you want your users to see personalised insights summaries. For more information, see Turn on Tableau AI.

The legacy Metrics feature was retired on Tableau Cloud in February 2024. Any legacy metrics on your site won’t carry over to Tableau Pulse. If you had legacy metrics, note the data source, measure and time dimension, then recreate them in Tableau Pulse. For more information about legacy metrics, see Create and Troubleshoot Metrics (Retired).

Understand governance for Tableau Pulse

A combination of settings and permissions control access to Tableau Pulse and its features.

• Site settings control the ability to access Tableau Pulse and to see features that use generative AI. See Deploy Tableau Pulse for your site and Turn on Tableau AI.
• Permissions for data sources and authentication to the data itself control the ability to view metrics and create metric definitions. See Permissions for viewing metrics.
• Settings on metric definitions control who can edit or delete metric definitions and goals. See Permissions for editing metrics and goals.

How site roles impact Tableau Pulse access

Users must have a site role of Creator, Site Administrator Explorer or Explorer (can publish) to create, edit or delete metric definitions in Tableau Pulse. There are no site role limitations for creating and viewing metrics, following and adding followers to metrics, or setting and editing goals for metrics. Users who have site roles that don’t allow an action won’t be able to take that action, regardless of the permissions they're granted.

Permissions for viewing metrics

Metrics in Tableau Pulse aren’t part of the project content hierarchy in Tableau Cloud or governed by content-based permissions, meaning you can’t deny a user the ability to see an individual metric. However, by adjusting permissions on a published data source, you can control whether users can view metrics based on that data source. Also, the data that users see when viewing a metric respects row-level security applied to the data source.

To view a metric, users must have:

• The Connect and View permission capabilities for the published data source that the metric is connected to. For more information about permissions, see Permission Capabilities and Templates.
• Access to the data in the data source that the metric is connected to.

Tableau Pulse doesn’t prompt users to sign in to the database or data connection for the data source. Instead, one of the following must be true for users to access the metric data:

• The credentials for the data source are embedded. For information about embedded credentials, see Set Credentials for Accessing Your Published Data.
• The user's credentials are passed to the data source with single sign-on.
• The user’s credentials are saved for the data source. For more information, see Manage Saved Credentials for Data Connections.
• The data source doesn't require the user to authenticate to access the data.

If users try to view a metric that they don’t have the correct permissions for, they see a message that the metric doesn’t exist or that they don’t have permission to access it.

Permissions for creating metric definitions and metrics

There is no setting to limit who can create metric definitions or metrics in Tableau Pulse. Any user with a site role of Creator, Site Administrator Explorer or Explorer (can publish) can create metric definitions. However, to create a metric definition, users must have the same permission capabilities for the data source and access to the data that are required to view a metric. For more information, see Permissions for viewing metrics.

A new metric is created any time users filter an existing metric, if one doesn’t already exist with that combination of filters. As long as users can view an existing metric, they can create new metrics by adjusting the filters. There are no site role limitations for creating metrics.

If you don’t want users to be able to create metric definitions or metrics from a data source, deny the View and Connect permission capabilities for that data source. For more information, see Permission Capabilities and Templates. Denying those permission capabilities also prevents users from being able to view metrics based on that data source.

Permissions for editing metrics and goals

You can adjust settings on a metric definition to control who can edit or delete the metric definition and who can set, edit or delete goals for the metrics based on that definition. Note that these settings won’t grant users the ability to edit a definition if their site role doesn’t allow it. Tableau administrators don’t need to be added as editors, because their site role gives them the ability to edit all metric definitions and goals. For more information, see Restrict definition and goal editing.

Tableau AI in Tableau Pulse

Tableau Pulse uses Tableau AI, which is Tableau's generative artificial intelligence technology, to provide users with personalised summaries of insights for the metrics they follow. Tableau AI is used to generate the language for these summaries, but Tableau AI isn't involved in the identification of data insights, and there are checks to ensure that no numbers are changed in the insights summaries. The insights that Tableau Pulse finds are grounded in the same types of statistical modelling used to analyse data in the traditional Tableau viz authoring experience.

Tableau Pulse doesn't use your site’s data to train Tableau AI. As soon as Tableau AI processes a prompt to generate an insights summary, the prompt and the response are forgotten. Your data isn’t stored outside of Tableau, and the only data that Tableau AI collects is the voluntary feedback users can submit about their insights summaries. For more information about Tableau AI, see Einstein Generative AI for Tableau(Link opens in a new window).

Turn on Tableau AI

Tableau AI is turned off for your Tableau site by default. Turn on Tableau AI for Tableau Pulse so your users can see their personalised insights summaries and get a quick overview of important changes to their metrics. The setting for Tableau AI is independent of the setting to deploy Tableau Pulse, meaning that turning on Tableau Pulse won't turn on insights summaries for Tableau Pulse.

1. From the main Tableau Cloud navigation menu, select Settings.
2. Under Tableau AI, select Tableau Pulse: Summarises key metric insights.
3. Select Save.

When you turn on Tableau AI for Tableau Pulse, users will see a notice informing them that generative AI can produce inaccurate or harmful responses. Users have the option to leave feedback about the quality of the insights summaries that they see by selecting a thumbs-up or thumbs-down rating.

Troubleshoot metrics

If users on your site don't see data when they create a metric definition or when they view a metric, there might be an issue with your data source. Be aware that if today’s date is the beginning of the current period for the time series, such as the first day of the month, the chart will display only that point. This isn’t an issue with your data source. New points in the time series will be added as the period progresses.

If a user is creating a metric definition and there's no data in the preview: Tableau Pulse presents preview data for the current period to date. If the measure selected has no recent data, the user won't see a preview on the chart. Check the data source to verify that the data is updating.

If a user is viewing a metric that previously had data, but now there's no data: Check to see if a field used by the metric was removed or changed in the data source. Edit the metric definition to account for this change, and the change will be reflected on all metrics based on that definition. For more information, see Edit a metric definition.