
When you open it, you’ll notice it’s Read-Only. Right-click on that, and choose to open in a text-editing program I’m using Notepad++: In the folder, you’ll see a file called samples.manifest. If you’re asking, “What’s a manifest file?!”, check out Debbie Yu’s blog post where she answers that.

twbx” and “templatescreenshot.png” to our en_US Workbooks folder, but now we also need to edit the manifest file so Tableau knows to pull them in. Editing the Manifest FileĪll right, so we’ve added “Template. Make sure to keep them on the phone because you’re going to need the help desk again in just a minute. Go ahead and click Continue and either use Admin credentials or contact your help desk. This is the first place you’ll want to make sure you have admin access-when you go to paste, you’ll likely get an error similar to this: png image of that workbook, so your users can see what it looks like on the home page. Now, the sample workbooks have several components to them, but the two you’ll definitely want are the workbook template saved as a. First, where do these sample workbooks live? On your computer, find Program Files and navigate to Tableau > your version > help > Workbooks > your language: While anyone with Admin access to their computer can do this, if you want this to be default when anyone in your organization downloads Tableau and not have individuals manage it, you’ll need to work with your IT team to ensure the Program Files discussed in this post are customized for your template.
#CREATE TEMPLATE WITH PRODUCTEEV HOW TO#
What if I could make my template a sample workbook, so it would just always be available to everyone? Well … you can! How to Create Your Dashboard Template So, how can we make this easier? Well, when you open Tableau, notice that there are Sample Workbooks on the homepage: I’ll just start blank.Īnd so, good intentions quickly tumble into inconvenience and bad habits. I don’t want to go look for that template wherever it is. Eh, I’m just going to mock something up really quickly.Then one day, when I was feeling especially impatient: I cycled between these two options for the first dozen dashboards I built. Err … where did that file exist? Let me call someone and see if they can find it.

If I want to use it again, I then need to go back to my Shared Folder and re-download. I open the template workbook, build what I want, publish and press Save As.Now, while this in theory is a good idea, let me give you scenarios that I’m all too familiar with from personal experience:
#CREATE TEMPLATE WITH PRODUCTEEV DOWNLOAD#
Previously, I’ve seen companies share this new “template” on a platform like Box or a shared drive, and then when folks go through Tableau training, they’re given access to this secret folder and can download it. We drop them on a dashboard, and we’d like to get everyone in the company to use this set-up. So, organized people that we are, when it comes to creating a dashboard, we set up a meeting with our communications team and get their sign-off on the color schemes and use of the company logo.

However, sometimes, our marketing and communications department would probably prefer some major dashboard components stick to brand (I’m looking at you, five-years-ago self, and your rainbow dashboard). Often, it’s awesome because folks get to see and understand their data. At many organizations, Tableau opens the door for creativity that didn’t exist before.
