Customizing Tableau Server Logos and Icons

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"

  3. Change the name by typing the following:

  4. 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”

  5. Restart the server for the change to take effect by typing:
  6. 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"

  3. Change the logo by typing the following:
  4. 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.

  5. Restart the server for the change to take effect by typing:
  6. 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

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.

Democratizing Business Intelligence using Gemini

If you’ve not heard of Gemini yet you’re in for a treat. I found these videos on youtube yesterday of the Gemini demo from the BI conference last year that you can view below.

Gemini is a new part of the MS BI stack that is an add-in for Excel that allows power-users the ability to essentially create their own cubes using virtually any data they can get their hands on.

Being the MS BI geek that I am, this opens up all sorts of new opportunities for prototyping solutions and enabling the business to build their own BI applications.

The key here, that I see, is that these solutions are not managed by IT. So, as soon as one of these Gemini cubes becomes business critical, it will need to be built using formal BI methods and tools so that the proper support procedures can be implemented. This is what scares me :-S

I can foresee smaller businesses that are resistant to change, or are scared of the term “Data Warehouse” from prior failed projects, that would want to implement Gemini solutions as business critical applications. Simply because it’s cheaper to implement in the short term, ignoring the lack of sustainability that a more traditional BI solution yeilds.

Enough rambling for now, watch the videos and let me know what you think…

Excelsius and the MS BI Stack

Recently I was on a call with a client and one of their IT guys asked if the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack can do everything Exclesius can do. In short, the answer is sorta. Through reporting services the MS BI stack can provide similar functionality however, it cannot provide the flash animations you get in Excelsius. The good news is however, that Excelsius can use the MS BI stack as a source for its data. This means if a client has already invested in Excelsius they can still reap the benefits of using the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack and are not locked in to using Business Objects for their entire Business Intelligence platform. I have included some links below of Excelsius demo’s you can view if you’re unfamiliar. Hope this helps!

Excelsius Demos – link

Business Objects SharePoint Integration Options – PDF