Advance with Assist: Site Roles Changing on Tableau Server

Data

Advance with Assist: Site Roles Changing on Tableau Server

Advance with Assist shares quick solutions to common challenges encountered by the InterWorks Assist on-demand team.

Question: We have a user whose role changed from a Creator to a Viewer overnight, but no one thinks they did it accidentally. Any way to tell who did this?

Fun times for server administrators here… I’ve seen this question come across Assist a couple times now, so I thought I’d write a quick blog about the answer. The good news is there is a way to get at this information, and it’s contained within the audit tables of the Tableau repository.

Solving with a Table Audit

First, you need to grant access to the read-only user for the Tableau server Repository. For more detail there, check out this resource from Tableau. After you’ve allowed access to your Server repository, the next step is the table to use. In this instance, we want the Historical_Events table. Here are some Tableau resources on the Repo Dictionary and Historical Events.

Within this table, you’ll find what Tableau refers to as the “heart” of the cluster devoted to auditing. The Historical Event Type ID shows the type of event and is linked to other relevant information. For our scenario, the user committing the change and the user being changed are found within two fields:

  • hist_actor_user_id
  • hist_target_user_id

Linking this events table to the Historical Event Types table is the next step. Historical_event_type_id connects the two for which you can find the Event Name of “Update User Site Role”:

In my workbook, I’ve renamed the field to Action, but you can see I have the ability to find this event using these tables:

Hope this helps you with your Server Admin audits, as this is only one event captured in these tables.

Want More Advance with Assist

  1. Advance with Assist: Filtering Select Dates with DATETRUNC
  2. Advance with Assist: Enhancing Dashboards with Custom Icons
  3. Advance with Assist: Tableau Power User Leaving the Company
  4. Advance with Assist: Context Filters and LOD Calculations
  5. Advance with Assist: Custom Subscriptions with Tableau Server Custom Views
  6. Advance with Assist: Blending with Dimension Not Utilized
  7. Advance with Assist: Creating a Sankey Diagram from Survey Data
  8. Advance with Assist: Multiple Dashboard Actions with a Single Click
  9. Advance with Assist: Refreshing Tableau Online Data with Tableau Bridge
  10. Advance with Assist: Parameter Performance Optimization
  11. Advance with Assist: Using Custom Backgrounds with Polygon Shapefiles
  12. Advance with Assist: Changing Default Properties on Data
  13. Advance with Assist: Options for Calculating Percentages
  14. Advance with Assist: Removing Options from Filter List
  15. Advance with Assist: Extracting Year from De-identified Text String
  16. Advance with Assist: Marking the Latest Date on Trend Line
  17. Advance with Assist: What You Need to Know About Aliases
  18. Advance with Assist: Function Compatibility
  19. Advance with Assist: Mass Parameter Replacement
  20. Advance with Assist: Sorting with MONTH in Reverse
  21. Advance with Assist: Ungroup Column Headers That Have Concatenated
  22. Advance with Assist: Connectionless Failure Error in Tableau Server
  23. Advance with Assist: How to Exceed Tableau’s Column or Row Limit
  24. Advance with Assist: Adding Email Links to Your Dashboard
  25. Advance with Assist: Saving User-Selected Filters on Tableau Server
  26. Advance with Assist: Tableau and Named Ranges in Excel
  27. Advance with Assist: Editing Custom Fields in Tableau-Published Data Sources
  28. Advance with Assist: NOW and TODAY Functions in Tableau
  29. Advance with Assist: Sheet Swapping with Dummy Headers
  30. Advance with Assist: REST Error in Tableau and Snowflake Connection
  31. Advance with Assist: Mapping with One Data Row in Tableau 2019.2
  32. Advance with Assist: Multi-Number Formats for Single Calculations
  33. Advance with Assist: Removing Background Landmass on a Tableau Map
  34. Advance with Assist: Filtering Data Sources on Tableau Server
  35. Advance with Assist: Swapping Sheets in Tableau 2019.2
  36. Advance with Assist: Filling in Null Records Without Filtering
  37. Advance with Assist: Nested IF Calculations in Tableau
  38. Advance with Assist: Getting Show/Hide Buttons to Appear in Tableau Desktop
  39. Advance with Assist: Alteryx Output Error
  40. Advance with Assist: Missing Joins in Tableau 2020.2
  41. Advance with Assist: Tableau Server – Interactive MicroService Container Degraded
  42. Advance with Assist: A Shortcut for Duplicating Calculations
  43. Advance with Assist: Tableau Server License Renewal Refresh 
  44. Advance with Assist: Encrypt Tabcmd Credentials
  45. Advance with Assist: Pointing Tableau to a Named Range
  46. Advance with Assist: Tableau Server Migrations
  47. Advance with Assist: Adding ALL Selection to Parameters
  48. Advance with Assist: Uncaught Type Error in Tableau Server
  49. Advance with Assist: Site Roles Changing on Tableau Server
  50. Advance with Assist: Highlighting Points of Interest
  51. Advance with Assist: Finding Max Date and More
  52. Advance with Assist: Adding Field Names Above Bars on a Bar Chart
  53. Advance with Assist: Using Map Layers with Unconnected Data Sources

More About the Author

Dustin Wyers

Support Lead, Americas
How Assist by InterWorks Supports Your Entire Data Stack Assist by InterWorks has been helping hundreds of InterWorks clients for years now. Assist got its beginnings as an on-demand, Tableau ...
Tableau Conference 2021: Devs on Stage in Review As always, the keynotes from the Tableau Conference, even virtually, are always an exciting highlight, and I love getting to write ...

See more from this author →

InterWorks uses cookies to allow us to better understand how the site is used. By continuing to use this site, you consent to this policy. Review Policy OK

×

Interworks GmbH
Ratinger Straße 9
40213 Düsseldorf
Germany
Geschäftsführer: Mel Stephenson

Kontaktaufnahme: markus@interworks.eu
Telefon: +49 (0)211 5408 5301

Amtsgericht Düsseldorf HRB 79752
UstldNr: DE 313 353 072

×

Love our blog? You should see our emails. Sign up for our newsletter!