Tableau Report Pack for SentryOne Monitoring Is Now Available!

This week, Tableau Conference 2018 (#TC18) is taking place in New Orleans. SentryOne is once again exhibiting at the conference, and we are very excited to announce a valuable new free release for our customers: Tableau Report Pack for SentryOne Monitoring. Many of our customers use the SentryOne platform to monitor, diagnose, and optimize their SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), and Azure SQL Database environments for their Tableau users. If the underlying database performance is suffering, Tableau performance is suffering—SentryOne can make it all sizzle again.

Earlier this year, we asked Tableau, a SentryOne customer, how they use their software in conjunction with SentryOne. The Tableau SQL Server team loves to utilize SQL Sentry’s granular health and performance metrics, purpose-built dashboard, Top SQL, Advisory Conditions, Alerts, and Event Calendar. However, they realized many stakeholders in other parts of their company also need SentryOne insights, but not always at the depth or in the format in which they are presented in the SentryOne client. They have been using Tableau to visualize, present, and distribute information from SentryOne to end users within the company. (Check out the SentryOne Success Story, “Tableau Software Uses SentryOne to Optimize Database Performance,” for more details.)

How does the Tableau team share SentryOne data? They built Tableau dashboards and reports that use the rich analytical data provided in the SentryOne Monitoring database, which is a SQL Server database. And you can do the same, too. To get started extracting valuable SentryOne Monitoring data, check out SentryOne VP of Product Jason Hall’s six-part “Mining Performance Data from SQL Sentry” blog series.

But we wanted to make this process even easier for SentryOne and Tableau users. So, we created the Tableau Report Pack for SentryOne Monitoring—a free set of reports you can download and use right away. The reports can be used as-is from Tableau Desktop or can be deployed to Tableau Server. Of course, no two organizations are the same; if the Tableau reports do not meet your needs as they are, you can edit them to meet any custom requirement.

Follow the steps below to get started using the Tableau Report Pack for SentryOne Monitoring:

1. Download the Tableau Report Pack for SentryOne Monitoring
2. Unzip the file
3. Open the Tableau workbook file
4. Accept the custom SQL prompt
5. Enter the connection information (server name and database name) for your SentryOne Monitoring database (keep it handy; you’ll need it again)
6. When you click another tab, you will be prompted again for the connection information (it asks twice because the first connection brings in server health data and the second pulls in disk data)
7. Run the reports
8. Enjoy (or go on and deploy to Tableau Server)

We welcome your feedback on this report pack! Please send your feedback and questions to tableau@sentryone.com.

Although the release of the Tableau Report Pack for SentryOne Monitoring is exciting, it’s important to mention some of the other ways in which SentryOne provides a lot of value in Tableau environments.

Understanding data sources and destinations in reporting and analytics environments is crucial, and often a matter of compliance. With SentryOne DOC xPress, you can document your Tableau Server environment and see data lineage from your SQL Server and Azure SQL Database data sources to your Tableau reports.

Often, change management for BI and analytics environments is an afterthought, or it is difficult to assimilate Tableau processes into DevOps. SentryOne BI xPress offers BI Compare, which enables you to compare your Tableau reports and server to look for differences and manage changes. And SentryOne LegiTest enables you to test Tableau through the REST API, making it possible to verify report deployments.