What Can I Do with a Tableau Site?

Applies to: Tableau Cloud, Tableau Desktop

Your Tableau site is a private workspace on the web where you can share data insights and collaborate with your colleagues. With certain access levels, you can connect to data and create workbooks right on the web, or connect to data sources and workbooks built in Tableau Desktop. Your site role sets what you’re able to do in your Tableau site.

What is a site?

A Tableau site is a place for your team to publish data sources and workbooks to share with each other.

In Tableau-speak, we use site to mean a collection of users, groups, and content (workbooks, data sources) that’s walled off from other sites (collections of users, groups, and content).

As a site user, you might be able to sign in to one site, or you might be able to sign into multiple sites, depending on the access your administrator gives you. After you sign in, you can see projects and content that you can access.

How does my site work with Tableau Desktop?

Tableau Desktop and your Tableau site are built to work together. In Tableau Desktop, you can connect to data and build workbooks, stories, and dashboards. When you want to share insights with others, you can publish workbooks and data sources to your Tableau site.

In your Tableau site, you can view, interact with, and edit those published views. You can also use your Tableau site to find and edit workbooks in Tableau Desktop.

What can I do on the web?

Your site role and content permissions determine what you can see and do with Tableau on the web. Starting in 2018.1, your Tableau site role can be Creator, Explorer, or Viewer. For in-depth details on each site role, see the capability grid on Tableau Pricing(Link opens in a new window).

Not sure what your site role is? To check, select the icon in the top right corner of the site with your initials or profile picture and select My Account Settings. Site Role tells you if you are a a Creator, Explorer, or Viewer.

In general:

Creators can:

  • Make new connections to data in the browser

  • Upload workbooks (.twb and .twbx files)

  • Build and publish data sources and workbooks from the browser or Tableau Desktop

  • Open and edit published workbooks in the browser or Tableau Desktop

  • Create new data flows and edit an existing flow

  • Use Dashboard Starters (Tableau Cloud only)

  • Everything else that Explorers and Viewers can do

Explorers* can:

  • Connect to published data sources on the site to create new workbooks

  • Save new workbooks in Personal Space

  • Download workbooks or other content in Personal Space, including data.

  • Edit and analyze data in published workbooks (Save and Save As options vary based on permissions. If Save as is available, workbooks can be saved in Personal Space.)

  • Create data alerts

  • Create subscriptions for others

  • Everything that Viewers can do

*The user level Explorer (can publish) is an Explorer who can publish new content from Tableau Desktop to a site and create and publish new content from an existing published data source, but cannot connect to external data or create new data sources.

Viewers can:

  • Create custom views and see published and custom views others have created

  • Explore the data in a view using filters and legends, sorting, and tooltips

  • Share, comment on, and download content (options vary based on permissions)

For more details, see What Can I Do with a Tableau Web View?

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