Publishing Reports in Tableau

Civis currently supports Tableau Desktop versions up to 2023.3.X

Connecting Tableau to your Redshift database allows you to build reports and visualizations from the outputs of your Civis Platform workflows. Through our Tableau server, Civis also enables you to share reports and interactive dashboards with others.

Check out our doc on Troubleshooting Common Errors with Tableau if you are experiencing issues that this page doesn't cover!

Download and Configure Tableau

Download Tableau Desktop:​ Your organization will need a Tableau Desktop license in order to connect to your Redshift Database. 

You will need to purchase Tableau Desktop via a Tableau Creator or a Tableau Cloud subscription to host your Tableau Desktop license. Alternatively, your organization can connect an existing Tableau Desktop license to your Redshift Database if your organization hosts its own Tableau Server. Civis currently supports Tableau Desktop versions up to 2022.3.X only.

Request Civis VPN access: ​ To publish your dashboards to Civis, you will need access to our virtual private network (VPN). Please create a support ticket to let us know you want to publish Tableau dashboards. Civis will configure your account on our Tableau server. Only the users who publish reports need VPN access. No VPN is needed to view dashboards within the platform.

Connect to Data

• On the Tableau Desktop start page click Connect to data​. Then select Amazon Redshift​. 
  
  
  
  
• Enter your Redshift username and password, and make sure the Require SSL​ option is checked. Information about finding your connection information can be found here.
• If you have any issues, make sure you have installed the Amazon Redshift ODBC drivers 
  
  
  
  

• In most cases, you will want to create an extract ​rather than a live connection. Extracts compress the data so viewers do not need to query the database while interacting with the dashboard. This improves the performance of your visualization. Extracts can be set to refresh on a schedule.

Build a Dashboard

Tableau provides a free collection of helpful training materials that cover topics for both new and experienced users. Learn how to get started with the software, build a map, or incorporate advanced calculations.

Publish

Once your report is ready to share, you can publish it to the Civis Platform:

1. Sign into Civis VPN
   1. Ensure you are signed into Civis Platform
   2. Open up the AWS VPN Client (for information on VPN Setup, please read here). 
   3. Select Civis VPN and click Connect
2. Sign in to Tableau Server (Server -> Sign In) using https://tableau.internal.civisanalytics.com
   1. Reference the Tableau Desktop section of Signing into the Civis Tableau Server for more information on signing into the server from Tableau Desktop
3. Click on Server -> Publish Workbook.
4. Name your workbook.
5. Click on Scheduling & Authentication. If you are using an extract, you can specify how often you want to refresh the data. Select Embedded password​ as the authentication method.
6. Make sure the Show Sheets as Tabs box is checked otherwise it won’t show up in Civis.

Finding Your Report in Platform

Once your report is published, you can find it in Platform by going to Publish>Reports. This will give you a list of all published reports that you have access to. From there, you can sort by Name, Newest, or Oldest, as well as filter it to the reports that you are the author of.

Additional Features

User filters

Tableau allows you to permission views so that different users see different versions of a master workbook. For example, you may want to build reports for teams in five different states. With user filters, you can create one Tableau workbook that displays only the appropriate state for each user.

Tableau offers documentation and useful examples for creating user filters.

If you are interested in filtering Tableau reports for users on the Civis platform, please see this page: User Level Filtering in Tableau.

Public Links

We use Tableau Public Links as a way for clients to share reports with stakeholders who do not want to log into Platform. People with access to a public link can only see the specific report associated with the link. They cannot navigate to any other Platform page.

Warning: Public links can be accessed by anyone with the link. These links can be limited to only work until a specific date. Please be careful when sharing these links, and carefully choose expiration dates to minimize risk. 

You may request a public link to a Tableau Report by contacting us using the help menu at the bottom-right of the Civis Platform Interface: