Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud are Salesforce's enterprise analytics platforms — Tableau Server is a self-hosted deployment while Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online) is the fully managed SaaS version. Administrators govern everything from site and project structure through user provisioning, licensing, content permissions, extract scheduling, and security to keep analytics pipelines reliable and data access controlled. The key mental model: three layers always interact — a user's license type sets the ceiling of capability, their site role defines the maximum within that site, and permission rules on individual projects or content determine what they can actually do.
What This Cheat Sheet Covers
This topic spans 16 focused tables and 139 indexed concepts. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.
Table 1: Licensing Models and Editions
License types are the commercial foundation of any Tableau deployment — every seat, capability, and upgrade path flows from which license tier a user or the server holds. Understanding the distinction between role-based and core-based models determines both cost structure and how administrators count consumption.
| Type | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|
Full desktop authoring, Tableau Prep, web authoring, publishing | • Highest individual license • enables Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder, full web authoring, and publishing new data sources and workbooks | |
Web edit existing workbooks, publish using existing data sources | • Mid-tier license • allows web-based authoring against published data sources but cannot connect to external data or publish new standalone data sources | |
View and interact with published dashboards, subscribe to views | • Lowest-cost license • read and interact with published content, subscribe to views, download images and summary data — cannot create or publish. | |
Named user assigned Creator/Explorer/Viewer license | • Each user requires exactly one named license • the license consumed is the highest site role that user holds across all sites on the server |