Grant License on Sign In


Grant license on sign in (Grant role on sign in) lets unlicensed users in specific groups become licensed when they sign into a Tableau site. This streamlines license provisioning for administrators and removes the user’s need to request a license before using Tableau.

For more information about site role capabilities and minimum site roles, see Set Users’ Site Roles.

For example, imagine that your company has 100 people in the Marketing group, but only 25 members need to access Tableau Cloud. The Tableau Cloud administrator isn't sure which 25 need Tableau. That administrator can create a Marketing user group with an Explorer minimum site role, select Grant role on sign in, and add all 100 Marketing members to the group. Instead of provisioning licenses to the entire group, the 25 Tableau users in Marketing are provisioned Explorer licenses when they sign in to their Tableau Cloud site. Those who don't need Tableau Cloud remain unlicensed unless they sign in.

Note: For more information about benefits and best practices, see Grant Role on Sign In(Link opens in a new window) in Tableau Blueprint, Tableau's planning tool for data-driven organizations.

Activate Grant role on sign in

You can enable Grant role on sign in on new or existing groups. The following steps walk through how to use Grant role on sign in to add new users that are eligible for a license but may not consume one. This may be the case when your company has a lot of eligible users, but limited Tableau licenses.

  1. On a site, add a new group:

    1. From the left navigation pane, click Groups, and then click New Group.

    2. Enter a group name.

    3. Optionally and if your site is licensed with usage-based model(Link opens in a new window), select the Allow on-demand access check box.

      For more information, see one of the following: On-demand access using connected apps with direct trust(Link opens in a new window) or On-demand access using connected apps with OAuth 2.0 trust(Link opens in a new window).

    4. Select Grant role on sign in and select a minimum site role for the group. This setting means licenses and site roles will only be provisioned to group users who sign into this Tableau Cloud site.

    5. Click Create.

  2. Add users to a site, either by entering users’ email addresses individually, or Import Users via a CSV file that you create using the CSV Import File Guidelines.

    • Enter email addresses if adding users individually. For information on using Google or SAML authentication when adding users, see Add Users to a Site.

      If you add more than one user, separate each address with a semicolon.

      For example, tdavis@example.com; jjohnson@example.com; hwilson@example.com

    • Set the site role for those users to Unlicensed.

    • Click Add Users.

  3. Add those new, unlicensed users to the new group.

    • From the left navigation pane, click Groups, and then click the name of the group.

    • On the Group's page, click Add Users.

    • Select the users to be added, and then click Add Users.

For more information, see Create a Group and Add Users to It.

Modifying user roles with Grant role on sign in

If a user is part of a group using Grant role on sign in, then that user role can't be set to unlicensed or downgraded to a role lower than the minimum site role set for the group, whether or not they sign in. Administrators can upgrade a user’s site role manually, however.

To downgrade a user’s site role, or unlicense the user from the site, remove the user from the group(s) that have Grant role on sign in enabled.

In accordance with the terms of the End User License Agreement(Link opens in a new window), licenses granted on an Authorized User basis may be permanently reassigned to new users. Users may only be downgraded to a lower site role (including Unlicensed) when they will permanently discontinue access to Server Software at the higher role.

Removing users affected by Grant role on sign in

You can remove a user from a site only if the user does not own content. If you attempt to remove a user who owns content, the user site role will be set to Unlicensed and removed from all groups, but the user will not be removed from the site. To remove content owners, remove owners from group with Grant site role enabled or reassign content ownership to another user. For more information, see Remove users from a site in the View, Manage, or Remove Users help topic.

If the default All Users group has Grant site role enabled, users who own content can't be removed from the site or unlicensed. To remove or unlicense these users, reassign content ownership to another user, then remove or unlicense the user.

Tableau REST API can be used to reassign content ownership of a workbook. For more information, see Update Workbook method in the REST API Help. REST API can also be used to remove users from the site and transfer content ownership to another user. For more information, see Remove User from Site method in the REST API Help.

For more information on reassigning content ownership in Tableau Cloud, see Manage Content Ownership.

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