The Tableau Guest User feature allows unrestricted viewing of published content on a Tableau site. When enabled by a site admin, it grants anonymous users access to specific visualizations without the need for individual login credentials.
Enabling Guest User for Tableau Site by Site Admin
- From the Tableau Server site menu, the site admit can navigate to 'Settings > General'.
- Select 'Enable guest access for this site' under Guest Access.
- Click 'Save' to apply changes.
Best Practices for Enabling Guest Access:
- Enable Guest access judiciously, considering security and privacy concerns.
- Regularly review and manage permissions for content accessible to Guest users.
- Use Guest access primarily for widely-shared, public-facing data visualizations.
- Ensure compliance with data governance policies while sharing content with Guest users.
Note: You can turn off Guest user access at the server or site level; however, you aren’t able to remove the user. So, although no one can access data or views without signing in to the server, the Guest user still appears in the Site Users list and group lists for groups you’ve added the Guest user to.
Using Guest User to Share Visualizations
A guest user can have the following capabilities:
- Workbooks and views: View, Export Image, Summary Data, View Comments, Filter, Full Data, Web Edit, Download (to save a local copy)
- Data sources: View and Download
- Users who publish content can share Tableau views with Guest users.
- Ensure the visualization is accessible to the Guest user with appropriate permissions.
- Share the visualization by providing URL links or embedding the views in web pages.
Note: The Guest user can view and interact with Tableau views but cannot access certain Tableau Server interface elements like user name, account settings, comments, etc.
For more detailed information, please refer to the original Tableau help article here.