Set Up a Site for Subscriptions

When users subscribe to a workbook or view, a snapshot of the view is emailed to them on a scheduled basis so they can see the latest updates without having to sign in to Tableau Server. Administrators, project leaders with appropriate site roles, and content owners have the option to subscribe other users to workbooks and views. For more information, see Subscribe to Views(Link opens in a new window).

Note: To create and receive subscriptions, users need access to related databases and views. See this list of requirements for details.

Looking for Tableau Server on Linux? See Setup a Server for Subscriptions(Link opens in a new window).

Prerequisite: Configure the server to send subscription emails

Before you can enable subscriptions for a site, you need to complete the steps to enable subscriptions on the server. Follow the steps in these topics to configure subscriptions on the server.

Enable subscriptions

After you have configured SMTP and server event notifications, you can enable subscriptions.

To enable subscriptions:

Sign in to Tableau Server as a server administrator.
Go to the General tab of the Settings page for the site you want to configure for subscriptions:
- If you have a single site, on the side navigation, click Settings and General.
- If you have multiple sites, select the site you want to configure and click Settings and General.
Scroll to Subscriptions and select the subscription options for your users.
Note: Subscription options are only visible after the TSM administrator has enabled the server-wide configuration option, Allow users to receive email for views that they have subscribed to. For details, see Configure Server Event Notification.
1. Select Let users subscribe to workbooks and views
2. (Optional) To allow content owners to subscribe other users to their content, select Let content owners to subscribe other users.
3. (Optional) To allow users to include attachments with their subscriptions, select Let users add attachments to subscribed workbooks and views. This option will not be available if the TSM administrator has not enabled attachments in TSM. For details, see Configure Server Event Notification.
(Optional) Scroll to Email Settings.
1. Enter an Email From Address that will show as the "From" address in email messages.
2. Enter an Email Footer for email messages.
  A site's "From" address and message footer are also used in emails for data-driven alerts.
(Optional) Scroll to High-Visibility Data Labels in View and Workbook Subscriptions and select Include high-visibility quality warnings and high-visibility sensitivity labels in view and workbook subscription emails. (In earlier versions, scroll to Data Quality Warnings in Subscriptions and select Include data quality warnings in subscription emails.)
Note: Data quality warnings in subscription emails are only visible when Tableau Catalog is enabled. For more information, see Enable Tableau Catalog.
Click Save.

To specify the subscription schedules available to users, see Create or Modify a Schedule.

Test subscriptions in a site

Subscribe to a view(Link opens in a new window).
In the site with the subscription you want to test, on the side navigation, click Schedules.
Select the schedule you chose for the subscription, and then click Actions > Run Now.
A snapshot of the view should be emailed to you within 10 minutes. If you experience an issue, see Troubleshoot Subscriptions.

Manage all user subscriptions

In the side navigation, click Tasks, and then click Subscriptions.
All user subscriptions for the current site appear, including information like subscriber name, view name and delivery schedule.
Select any subscription you want to update. From the Actions menu, select Change Schedule, Change Subject, Change Empty View Mode or Unsubscribe.
(The empty-view option sends subscription emails only when data exists in a view. It's a good choice for high-priority alerts.)

Suspended Subscriptions

By default, a subscription is suspended after 5 consecutive subscription failures and result in the subscription emails not sent. To change the threshold number of subscription failures that can occur before they are suspended, use the tsm configuration set option, backgrounder.subscription_failure_threshold_for_run_prevention. This sets the threshold for the number of consecutive failed subscriptions necessary before suspending the subscription. This is a server-wide setting.

Only Server administrators can configure the threshold number of subscription failures before a subscription is suspended.

Server administrators can opt in to receive email notifications when a subscription is suspended. You can do this by navigating to My account settings -> Subscription Notifications. This setting is at a site-level so has to be configured for site separately.

Resume suspended subscriptions

If a subscription fails more than five times, you'll receive a notification email that your subscription has been suspended. There are a few ways to resume a suspended subscription if you're a subscription owner or administrator:

From the My Content area of Tableau web pages, an icon appears in the Last update column to indicate that the subscription is suspended. Select... > Resume Subscription to resume.
From the Subscriptions tab of the affected workbook, an icon appears in the last update column to indicate that the subscription is suspended. Select... > Resume Subscription to resume.
From the Subscriptions tab under Tasks, an icon appears in the last update column to indicate that the subscription is suspended. Select... > Resume Subscription to resume (Server administrators only).

When a subscription is resumed, the alert failing count goes back to zero. The next evaluation of the subscription will occur at the next scheduled evaluation time.

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