Tableau Cloud Migration Strategy

• Prep work

o Perform a gap analysis to understand

 Users - get rid of users who haven’t used Tableau over x days

 Workbooks - get rid of stale content (workbooks, datasources) that have not been accessed over 90/180 days

 Datasources

• Inventory of where datasources are coming from

• Those that will need to go through Tableau Bridge vs straight to online

• Identify embedded datasources that will need to be published separately to use Tableau bridge

 Since Tableau Cloud only has one site, need to map existing sites and structure to the new Cloud one site

o Finalize and get agreement from project sponsor before proceeding

 Sites to remain and going to Parent Projects

 Remaining Projects and subprojects hierarchy

 Users to migrate

 Groups

 Workbooks

 Datasources

• Decide who will do the migration because you will need the credentials for the various datasources

o Depending on the number of workbooks and datasources and resource availability, this initial prep work may take up to 2-3 weeks

• Migration activities

o Send communication to all Tableau users of the migration activities. Let them know to participate in testing and track changes to workbooks/datasources during this period

o Depending on the complexity and number of items to migrate, it might be helpful to migrate all desired items to a staging area first like a Migration folder on the current system. This allows users to see how the structure and what it will look like once everything is migrated to the cloud (except for datasource being refreshed via Bridge)

 Import Users and Groups first

 Break out embedded datasources from workbook that need to use Bridge

o Tools

 The migration process from on premise to cloud is very manual. Depending on the amount of content to migrate, using an automated tool can decrease this time.

• Tableau has content migration functionality with their Advanced Management license

• Brilliant also has a migration tool, https://www.brilliantassociatesinc.com/brilliant-manager-for-tableau

o Settings

 Setup the migration user as the Site Administrator Creator on Tableau online

o Users

 Upload file per Tableau field format

 Need to migrate all users and groups to staging areas first to retain permissions

 Communicate to users that they will receive invite from Tableau to establish their login credential

o Groups – manual creation

 Create Groups consisting of Site All Users to be used in permission setting to replace All Users online since there is only one Site

o Projects – manual

o Datasources

 Setup Tableau Bridge server and client

• Drivers, etc…

• Need to discuss method of owning and refreshing these datasources going through bridge

o Must be owner of datasource

• Bridge strategy

o Centralized, mixed, or individual

o Run As Service account

 Whitelist IP for direct connections

 Access to data source files like excel, csv

 Older version of tde vs hyper

• Online only allows hyper

o Workbooks

 Separate embedded datasources if going through Bridge

 Embedded passwords

o User/group permissions – remap manually

 Should set permission by projects

 Then by groups not individual users

 Note if permission at project is locked, then content will inherit project permissions

o Tags

o Descriptions

o Favorites

o Subscription tasks

o Schedule refresh

o Saved custom views

o Data alerts

o Update all items to latest versions from on premise

o Deployment

 Recheck on any updated items

 Run in parallel to ensure both systems are up to date