What to watch
Good monitoring covers the whole platform, not only whether the server is up. Five areas matter most:
- Infrastructure health: the machines and processes Tableau Server runs on.
- Workload and queues: whether background jobs are keeping up with demand.
- Refresh reliability: whether extracts and subscriptions complete, and complete on time.
- Performance and experience: how long people wait for dashboards to load.
- Capacity and storage: how quickly you are approaching your limits.
What Tableau gives you
Administrative views
Built-in dashboards that show recent activity: background tasks, load times, traffic and space usage. They are the first place to look when something has gone wrong. See Administrative views for monitoring.
Server status and email notifications
Tableau Server shows the state of each process, and can email administrators about events such as a process going down or drive space running low. See Configure server event notification.
Resource Monitoring Tool
A separate tool for deeper hardware and performance monitoring, with its own incidents. It is part of Advanced Management, which is licensed separately. See About Resource Monitoring Tool.
Your wider IT monitoring
Most organisations also watch the underlying machines with their general infrastructure monitoring.
Where the built-in tools stop
- They look backwards. Most views tell you what has already happened, not what is building up.
- Someone has to look. Dashboards only help when a person opens them, and busy teams look after the incident.
- They rarely say why, or what to do. You get a number or a failed job, and the diagnosis is left to you.
- Signals are separate. Related problems appear in different places, so the common cause is easy to miss.
The options compared
| Built-in views and notifications | Resource Monitoring Tool | VizBolt Server Intelligence | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best at | Seeing recent activity and basic up or down events | Deeper hardware and performance detail | Early warnings across the platform, with evidence and next steps |
| Tells you | What happened | What is happening on the hardware | What is developing, why it matters and what to do |
| How you find out | You open a view, or get a basic email | You review incidents in the tool | Email, Slack or Microsoft Teams, urgent items at once |
| Licence | Included | Advanced Management | VizBolt subscription |
These are not either-or. Many teams keep Tableau’s own tools for investigation and add VizBolt Server Intelligence for early warning.
A simple monitoring routine
- Agree what matters: which content and refreshes the business depends on, and by when.
- Decide who hears what: urgent issues to the people on call, the rest in a daily summary.
- Review trends weekly, not only incidents.
- Act on patterns rather than single failures.
- Review the whole platform at least once a year. See the health check checklist.
Common questions
How do I monitor Tableau Server?
Use Tableau’s administrative views and server status for recent activity, email notifications for basic events, and optionally the Resource Monitoring Tool or a proactive tool such as VizBolt Server Intelligence for early warnings.
Does Tableau Server send alerts?
Yes, for basic events such as a process going down or low drive space, once an administrator configures server event notification.
What is the Tableau Resource Monitoring Tool?
A separate monitoring tool for Tableau Server hardware and performance. It is part of Advanced Management, which is licensed separately.
What does VizBolt add?
Early warnings across infrastructure, workload, refreshes, performance and capacity, each with the evidence behind it and a recommended next step, sent by Email, Slack or Teams.
Further reading: Tableau Help, Tableau monitoring; Built-in alerts; About Resource Monitoring Tool. Tableau and Salesforce are trademarks of Salesforce, Inc.