Tableau Server Organisation

Best Practice:

Our Tableau server houses many reports used across the institution. It’s important to review what is held on the server for the following reasons:

• Ease of use
  Removing old reports and only having active and up to date content in an organised structure will help users easily navigate to the workbooks they require.

• File store utilisation
  Removing unused or stale content will reduce storage requirements and maintenance time.

• Out of date data
  If we display data that’s not kept up to date this could result in users making decisions based on incorrect/out of date data.

Process for server content reviews:

1. All workbooks with less than 10 views in the last year will be reviewed using common sense (e.g. some reports are only used annually). 

2. The list of any workbooks recommended for archive will be shared with the wider team to review so concerns can be raised before any action is taken.

3. Any reports agreed to be archived will be moved to the archive Project on Tableau Server.

   1. Where applicable the users who have viewed these workbooks will be made aware if the workbook is going to be archived.

4. Once a workbook has been archived, if it receives no requests for reinstatement in the next 6 months then it will be removed from Tableau Server and saved to the Network drive.

Process to avoid duplication:

• When a new workbook is developed, which includes data from a previous workbook, the old workbook should be moved to the archive Project on Tableau Server. Examples of these include: NSS, PTES, PRES.

• Once a workbook has been archived, if it receives no requests for reinstatement in the next 6 months then it will be removed from Tableau Server and saved to the Network drive.

This process is to be repeated every 6 months to keep on top of stale/unused content and is visualised in a flow chart below:

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