Data Access
A how-to for all data mining endeavors
Tableau is a popular data visualization tool for interactive self-service reporting and analysis. Tableau can be used by anyone at Northeastern wishing to create their own data visualizations for use within their organization.
Northeastern’s Tableau Environment
Tableau at Northeastern is a combination of desktop software and the ability to publish desktop creations to a server for sharing. The two components you need to do this are explained below.
Tableau Creator is the software installed on your own machine for the purpose of connecting to many different types of data sources, exploring the data, and creating interactive dashboards, analyses, and repots. A Creator license entitles you to use Tableau Desktop for data exploration and visualization and Tableau Prep Builder for querying, combining, shaping, and cleaning your data. This license also allows you to publish your data visualizations to the Tableau Server.
Tableau Server is available to any faculty or staff member at Northeastern to publish and share Tableau workbooks internally. No Tableau license is necessary just to view Tableau workbooks that other people have published. The server is located at https://tableau.northeastern.edu.
The Northeastern Tableau Community
The Tableau community at Northeastern meets approximately quarterly to exchange ideas and share information. If you would like to be informed about these events and other Tableau information, we encourage you to join our Teams site for Northeastern Tableau users. There, you can ask the group a question, look for information on upcoming user group meetings, and access training and education materials. Click on “Join or create team” at the bottom left corner of the Teams app, and then enter the Tableau User Group join code 1vcpn3g and click “Join team”.
Licensing
Tableau Creator licenses can be obtained centrally via ITS. A limited number are available for use by the Northeastern analytics community, so if you need a license, please submit a ServiceNow ticket.
Faculty who are using Tableau for teaching purposes may submit a request online on the Tableau website to receive a free license. Students are also eligible to receive a free license via the Tableau website request form.
Tableau Server
No individual license is needed to log into the Tableau Server. Any faculty or staff member can log into the Tableau Server at Northeastern to view the content, but access to content is determined by the content publisher.
The Tableau Server, hosted and maintained by ITS, is divided into sites, typically along college, unit or departmental lines. Each site has a site administrator who controls the ability of faculty or staff to publish to their site via “permissions” and is responsible for communicating with Tableau users in their group (such as in the case of periodic server downtime for server maintenance). If your department does not have a site on the server but would like to start one, please submit a request via Service Now. Be sure to include the name of the new site administrator. For a list of current sites and their administrators, please see below.
Security and Permissions
As with any data at Northeastern, you must be granted access to the information source to be able to supply data to your Tableau workbooks. Also, any publishers of Tableau workbooks to the Tableau Server are responsible for properly securing the contents via appropriate permissions. It is a best practice to supply Viewer (and/or Interactor) privileges to those who will see your Tableau workbook, and remove download (data or workbook) privileges. Please use the Data Classification guidelines as well as the Confidentiality of University Records policy when determining who should see the information you are providing. These and other helpful policies can be found on the policy page, and Best Practices for permissions can be found on the Northeastern Tableau user group site.
Tableau Site Administrators
| Department | Site Administrator(s) |
|---|---|
| University Decision Support | John Bielaus Mike Carlucci Diana Danelian Rana Glasgal Brian McGrath |
| College of Science | Sam Inman Settanah Savoy |
| Registrar | John Alton Eric Benevides Annie Dervin-Jundt Jennifer Dai Amy Hull |
| College of Social Sciences and Humanities | Nancy Falk Petula Durocher |
| College of Arts, Media and Design | Nora Rasanen |
| Advancement | Thomas Villiotte Allison Jones |
| Alumni Relations | Isabella Bachman Jack McCorkle |
| Student Affairs | Robert Birichi |
| Enrollment Management – Undergraduate | Ethan Cheatle Crissy Gaffney Ilia Xheblati Sandra Sweeney Alexander Leon |
| D’Amore McKim School of Business | Neha Thakur Rachel Gontarz Chan Kuk Park Henry Fellner Fernando Antonioli |
| Bouve College of Health Sciences | Ben Brown Roy Schifilliti |
| College of Engineering | Sawyer Dosier |
| Khoury College of Computer and Information Science | Michel Feldman Sarah Maravetz |
| Information Technology Services | Samy Hay Sophia Jagannathan Christopher Carrillo Mark Chambers Amelia Solis |
| Student Financial Services | Warren Lord Ilia Xheblati Cristina Ruscito Sandra Sweeney Alexander Leon |
| Research Administration | Shruti Walawalkar Joan Cyr Dziyana Aydin |
| Global Experience Office | (currently no site admin) |
| Human Resources | Nishchitha Thuljaram Yoganand |
| NU Classroom | Rana Glasgal |
| School of Law | Greg Houghton |
| Teaching and Learning Group | Daniel Seaton Harun Gunasekaran Girlie Delacruz |
| College of Professional Studies | Joseph Reynolds Asim Javed |
| Enrollment Management – Graduate/Professional | Anuraag Macha Cristina Ruscito Meghan Ryan Sandra Sweeney Ilia Xheblati Alexander Leon Molly Lindberg Markus Rabelo Samantha Smith |
| University Library | Jen Ferguson Kate Kryder James Lee Sarah Sweeney |
| External Affairs | Greg Houghton |
| Internal Consulting | Fabio Yeboles Chen |
| Facilities Operations | Jared Videlefsky Joe Lalley Carl Parisien |
| LEARN | Suzanne Horwitz |
| Husky Card Office | Brendan Kastner Daniel Minchoff |
| Campus Planning | Scott Margeson |
| PhD Network | Rana Glasgal Sara Wadia-Fascetti |
| Provost | Kirsten Gilbert |
| Chancellor | Alexander Leon Kevin Schultz Ilia Xheblati |
| Finance | David Navick Anna Rodier Tanya Boulanova Brian McKenna |
| Office of Global Services | Sandra Sweeney Ethan Cheatle Crissy Gaffney Cristina Ruscito Ilia Xheblati |
| Housing and Residential Life | Ryan Evaul Daniel Palmateer |
| Global Campus Network | Avnish Patel |
| Digital Learning | Matt Behlmann Bradley Hemenway |
| Center for Inclusive Computing | Megan Giordano |
| Office of Institutional Assessment and Evaluation | Sophia Jagannathan |
| Regional Campuses | Kate Chan |
| Roux Institute | Colin Campbell |