Category Archives: Business Intelligence

How to add an ‘All’ parameter option in Tableau

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Ever wanted to include an ‘All’ option in your Tableau parameters? Simple! Here’s how:

  1. Create your parameter with the options available. In this example I’m creating one for [Region]. Make sure to manually add the ‘ALL’ option.
  2. Drag the corresponding field you will be filtering on to the filters shelf
  3. Right click on the field and choose ‘Filter’ then the ‘Condition’ tab
  4. In the ‘By Formula’ radio option on the bottom enter the formula below, replacing my [Region] fields with your own
  5. Revel in your accomplishment


IFNULL([Region],'Null') = IF [Region Parameter] != 'ALL' THEN [Region Parameter] ELSE IFNULL([Region], 'Null') END

Customizing Tableau Server Logos and Icons

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When deploying Tableau Server for a client, I often find that clients wish to customize their Tableau Server environment with their own branding. The Tableau Server Administration Guide offers some options for customizing Tableau Server however it is limited in what it allows.

Here are the default options that you can customize using tabadmin commands found in the Tableau Server Administration Guide.

Changing the Name

You can customize Tableau Server’s look and feel by customizing the name that
appears in screen tips and messages. To change the name:

  1. Open a command prompt as an administrator and type the following:


    2. 32-bit: cd "C:\Program Files\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\bin"
    64-bit: cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\bin"

  2. Change the name by typing the following:


    3. tabadmin customize name "new_name"

    In the above line, replace “new_name” with the text that you want to appear as
    the name on the server. Example: tabadmin customize “Company
    Server”

  3. Restart the server for the change to take effect by typing:

    4. tabadmin restart

Changing the Logo

You can customize Tableau Server’s look and feel by customizing the logo that appears
on the Tableau Server login page and in the left column of most pages. To change the
logo:

Note: This does not include the site favicon or Tableau Server Icon displayed when viewing a dashboard. More on that below.

  1. Open a command prompt as an administrator and type the following:


    2. 32-bit: cd "C:\Program Files\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\bin"
    64-bit: cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\bin"

  2. Change the logo by typing the following:

    3. tabadmin customize logo "C:\My Pictures\logo.png"

    In the above line, replace “C:\My Pictures\logo.png” with the path and file
    name of the image that you want to appear as the logo on the server. For best
    results, use an image that is 125 pixels x 35 pixels in size. The image can be a
    .png, jpg, or .gif file.

  3. Restart the server for the change to take effect by typing:

    4. tabadmin restart

 

Customizing the Tableau Server icons

(Not officially supported by Tableau)
In this example E is the root of where I installed Tableau. I do this so that I can have a faster disk with more storage capacity than the C drive. I recommend this practice for all instances where you can afford it.

E:\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\server.ico
E:\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\wgserver\public\favicon.ico
E:\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\wgserver\public\v_70001201131054\favicon.ico
E:\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\wgserver\public\v_70001201131054\images\server-logo.gif
E:\Tableau\Tableau Server\7.0\wgserver\public\v_70001201131054\images\tableau-icon.gif

If you try this solution and find additional images that need to be replace, or if anyone wants to make a script for this please reply in the comments with what you found!

Amazon EC2 Hosting and Tableau

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Recently I started working with the Amazon EC2 (more) and have been pleasantly surprised. In about 20 minutes I was able to create my own Windows 2008 R2 Data Center Edition Server in the cloud with enough space to run Tableau Server.

Choosing one of the basic configurations from Amazon makes life easy to provision enough horsepower to run a product like Tableau Server but of course there are many more ways you can customize your instance to meet you or your customers needs. Full disclosure, I plan on offering cloud based Tableau Server hosting to my consulting clients so my idea that cloud services like hosted Tableau becoming the new standard for niche BI vendors is a clear alignment of interests.

That said, from start to finish I had a fully functional Tableau Server environment within an hour and was able to access it externally as well. One downside I see here is the lack of Active Directory integration for clients however, Tableau fully supports this, there would just be some networking voodoo needed to make it work.

Without Active Directory integration Tableau Server uses forms based authentication. This means you have to setup each user individually or by script. All in all the trade offs between trying to deploy an on-premise Tableau Server implementation and a cloud based one, the cloud one is definitely attractive.

I haven’t fully explored what all the EC2 has to offer however I can assure you that as I start offering it to clients I’ll post updates about the ins and outs of using Tableau Server on the Amazon EC2 cloud environment.

Full Device Encryption on Android 4.0

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After upgrading my mobile device to the Nexus S from Google, I was poking around in the security settings when I found something new. Android 4.0 now has full-device encryption capabilities. This means that while enterprises wishing to gain the usefulness and beauty of information design presented by mobile BI vendors like Roambi but have been skeptical of data security now can rest at ease.

The full-device encryption and Android 4.0 isn’t easy however. Device owners must secure their device with a password or pin, so no fun face-unlock capabilities but for many used to dealing with corporate BlackBerrie’s I’m sure this is a minimal sacrifice.

After going to Settings > Security to enable encryption, you must provide a password or pin. The next step is for your device to reboot and encrypt all of its contents. During this time you’ll see the following screen:

This process will take about an hour. Once this process finishes you’ll now be required to enter your password to decrypt the device anytime you reboot it. Here is what that screen looks like:

That’s all I’ve got so far, I’ll update this post with more details as I get them. The main thing here, and reason I posted this is to draw attention to Android 4.0 device security for mobile BI vendors. Anyone serious about mobile BI and Data Security should start adopting this platform.

My Job

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This is from a recent assignment I submitted. I thought it was relevant and decided to share. Enjoy!

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Business Intelligence Developer Position

My position is a Business Intelligence Developer, which means that I build analytical database systems, which allows business people to make better decisions based on the improved visibility into the measures of their business. I first started this career as an analyst building reports in Microsoft Excel. My curious mind and ambitious nature lead me to quicker and more efficient ways of delivering these analyses. Ten years later I have built many relationships, done consulting, presented at many events, and am currently working on my first book. With that context provided, here are my interpretations of how my position measures up against Hackman and Oldham’s Job Characteristics model.

Skill Variety

Business Intelligence is a highly specialized field. This field still contains however, much variety. From a pure technical perspective, being a Business Intelligence Developer can require Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) knowledge, Multi-Dimensional Database Design (OLAP), Extract Transform and Load practice (ETL), and presentation layer / report design. Doing the job of a Business Intelligence developer well also requires a solid understanding of the business. This is where Business Intelligence is unique in its attempt to bridge the gap between the business side and the technology side.

Task Identity

In small BI shops, the BI developer may be responsible for designing, building, and delivering the entire solution. In larger organizations, the one I work in, tasks are a bit more segregated however goals are still defined at a team level which encourages the team to work together and gain an understanding of the entire process.

Task Significance

The goal of Business Intelligence is to improve decision making in the company that eventually leads to increased revenue, reduced costs and increased profits. The correlation between BI efforts and these eventual outcomes however, is not always so clear.

Autonomy

Similar to most Business Technology Services (BTS) projects, Business Intelligence traditionally is managed from a program and project approach. Programs define the strategy and overall goal of the BI program while projects make up the individual deliverables all working towards the same goal. Depending on the project management method being used (eg. waterfall or agile) it can be difficult to have much autonomy over organizing your tasks. In my position we are lucky to use an Agile project management methodology that allows the core team, including myself, to have a great say in what tasks are required to do my job well.

Feedback

The most common way feedback is received by the BI team is when something goes wrong with the nightly ETL processing that updates the data in the presentation layer. This feedback of course is always negative however, positive feedback is also received when the data is on time and accurate. There is some gray area here where no feedback is given and the data being presented is assumed to be correct when in fact it is not. This is why we have placed a laser like focus on the quality of our data being presented.

Where to improve

Since I have had a lot of input into the processes and procedures, we have in place currently it is difficult for me to say where we can improve much.  I will note however that the challenges we face with relating task significance and feedback are common among all Business Intelligence programs and can always use some more attention.