Use Admin Insights to Create Custom Views
You can get more visibility into your Tableau Cloud deployment by using Admin Insights.
Admin Insights is a Tableau Cloud-only project that is pre-populated with carefully curated data sources and a pre-built workbook of your site's data. Using the resources available to you through the Admin Insights project, you can create custom views to help answer a range of common questions you might have about your site.
For example:
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What's my Tableau Cloud adoption rate in my organization?
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What are common trends around the site’s deployment?
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What content is popular?
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What are my users doing?
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How should licenses be allocated?
Connect to Admin Insights data
If you're a site admin or someone who has been granted access to the Admin Insights project, you can access the Admin Insights data sources directly from Tableau Cloud using Web Authoring or through Tableau Desktop.
From Tableau Cloud
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Sign in to Tableau Cloud and navigate to the Admin Insights project.
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Select Create > Workbook and select one of the data sources to get started.
From Tableau Desktop
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Open Tableau Desktop, under Connect, select Tableau Server.
Note: If you're not already signed in to Tableau Cloud, in the Tableau Server Sign In dialog, click the Tableau Cloud hyperlink. Enter your Tableau Cloud credentials and then click Sign In.
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In the search box, type the name of the data source you're looking for.
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Select a data source and click Connect to get started with your analysis.
Start creating custom views
As you think about how you want to approach the analysis of your site and user metrics, consider some of the following questions that organizations commonly ask:
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What are the most popular views or data sources?
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Who are the most active users (i.e., who are the power users)?
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What are the most common tasks performed on the site?
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How many licenses are being used?
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Who hasn't signed in to the site in more than 90 days?
Explore the pre-built workbook
To help you answer the previous questions (and more), go to the pre-built workbook, Admin Insights Starter, to see what kind of insights it can offer. The workbook serves as a template for creating more detailed dashboards and workbooks that address unique questions related to your site or organization.
Starting in October 2024, localized versions of the Admin Insights Starter workbook are available as accelerators on Tableau Exchange(Link opens in a new window).
Focus: Site activity
Data source: TS Users
Use this dashboard to explore high-level site activity by user role.
This dashboard shows you some of the ways you can analyze your site’s log and activity metrics. Although Admin Insights captures up to 90 days of data (365 days with an Advanced Management license), the “Last Publish” and “Last Access” dates can go back to as early as the date the site was created.
Do more with this dashboard:
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Change the "Inactivity threshold" (yellow by default) using the parameter control in the upper-right corner.
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Create URL actions that can email users based on their activity type. For example, email users when they haven’t signed in to the site, accessed content, or published content in the last 90 days.
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Create additional views for this dashboard that compares the last 90 days (default) of activity (sign in, access, or publish) to the last 30 days, 60 days, and all days.
Focus: Group membership and licensing
Data source: Groups, TS Events, TS Users
The dashboard shows you the count of groups and grouped users on the site. Use the filters or click a row or mark in the Group Breakdown worksheet to select a group. After a single group is selected, you can view membership and license details.
The dashboard shows you the following types of information:
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Group membership: How many groups and grouped users are on the site
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License consumption: The percentage of groups using licenses on sign-in
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Site roles and license type: Which users are members of the group and what site role are they assigned
Do more with this dashboard: Select a user from the membership worksheet to email all group members.
Focus: Sign-in activity
Connects to: TS Events (primary), TS Users (secondary)
Use this dashboard to explore trends in sign-in activity.
Using the “Select Events or Distinct Actors” selector on the left, you can see your site’s weekly, daily, and hourly sign-in-related activity. Because there are two data sources behind this dashboard, you can see sign-ins by all users, not just users with recent sign-in activity.
Do more with this dashboard: Duplicate the dashboard and keep only the “Login user breakdown.” Then change the filter on the “Last Login Date” to null to see a list of users who have never signed in to the site. You can also email them depending on what kind of action you want users to take.
Focus: Content access and usage
Connects to: TS Events
The information in the dashboards show you the following types of information:
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View access activity: When a view has been accessed and by whom.
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Data source access activity: When 1) a published data source has been connected to through Web Authoring or Tableau Desktop or 2) a user has viewed or published a workbook that uses the published data source.
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Workbook publish activity: When a workbook has been published and by whom.
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Data source publish activity: When a published data source has been published and by whom.
Do more with this dashboard: Using the “Project Name” selector in the upper-right corner, select a project on your site to filter on. This filter affects all sheets in the Admin Insights Starter.
Focus: Content usage and disk space
Connects to: Site Content, TS Events
The dashboard shows you the following types of information:
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Disk space usage by activity: Amount of space used by stale content and content considered active - content accessed in the time frame below the stale threshold.
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Space used by item: Amount of space used by content on the site. The x-axis shows the number of days since the content was last viewed, while the y-axis shows the size.
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Space used by stale and unused content: Total amount of space used by stale and unused content. You can use this information to determine which content is the most stale or takes the most space.
Do more with this dashboard:
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Use the Inactivity Threshold to determine how long content can go unused before it’s deemed stale. Changing this value filters content items that don't meet the threshold.
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Use the Project Name selector to filter content by project. This filter affects all sheets in the Admin Insights Starter.
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To maintain a clean site, remove content that is no longer in use. If you’re unsure, select an item to email the content owner before deleting it.
Focus: Content ownership and disk space
Connects to: Site Content, TS Events
The dashboard shows you the following types of information:
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Site capacity: Amount of space used in relation to the total site capacity.
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Space usage by project: Amount of space used by top-level projects. Selecting a project filters the other worksheets to show content items, size, and ownership details.
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Space usage by item: Amount of space used by content items, such as workbooks, data sources, flows, and virtual connections.
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Space usage by user: Check how much space content owners are using and identify if any groups or users are exceeding their allotted space.
Do more with this dashboard:
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Use the Project Name selector to filter content by project. This filter affects all sheets in the Admin Insights Starter.
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Select an item or user to send an email and clarify how the content is used.
Explore the data sources
You can connect to Admin Insights data sources from Tableau Cloud and Tableau Desktop. Connecting to the data sources directly allows you to explore the data and build dashboards or workbooks specific to your organization. For more information about how to connect, see Connect to Admin Insights data in this topic.
The following table provides an overview of each data source.
Data source | Description |
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TS Events | TS Events functions as a primary audit data source. It contains data about the various events happening on your site, including sign-in, publishing, and accessing views. |
TS Users | TS Users contains data about your users, such as remaining licenses, site roles, and workbooks owned by a user. It also includes product activation and usage data for Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep, web authoring, and site role-specific capabilities. |
Groups | The Groups data source identifies the group membership of users on the site. |
Site Content | The Site Content data source provides essential governance information about the assets on your site, such as projects, workbooks, flows, and views. It also includes Tableau Pulse information. |
Viz Load Times | Viz Load Times contains the load time information for views on your site, helping content authors understand the user experience when loading views. |
Job Performance | Job Performance contains events and runtime information for background jobs on the site, such as extract refreshes and flow runs. It also includes Tableau Bridge refresh data, such as the Bridge client name, pooling data, and refresh started and completed times. |
Permissions | Permissions contains the effective permissions for all users and content on the site. Site administrators can use the data source to identify gaps in permissions security and ensure that only the appropriate users can access content items. |
Subscriptions | The Subscriptions data source provides details about subscriptions on the site, including the name of the creator and recipient, content item, job status, and schedules. It also includes Tableau Pulse information. |
Tokens | Tokens contains information about active, unexpired user tokens on the site, including personal access tokens (PATs), refresh tokens, and OAuth tokens. Site administrators can monitor token usage and expiration through the data source, rotating essential tokens as needed. |