Installing the command window

Tableau Server Help on Windows

Note: The tabcmd command line utility version 2.0 is available on Tableau tabcmd (The link opens in a new window) (new window). This new version allows you to run tabcmd commands on macOS and authenticate using personal access tokens, which ensures your compliance with multi-factor authentication. Version 2.0 is based on public endpoints available in Python-based Tableau Server Client (TSC). This latest version works for both Tableau Cloud and Tableau Server.

Tableau provides the tabcmd command-line utility that you can use to automate site administration tasks on your Tableau Server site. For example, create or delete users, projects and groups.

Note: This tabcmd utility is included with Tableau Server and is installed automatically on server nodes. However, its installation program is not included. If you want to run tabcmd on computers that are not part of your Tableau Server installation, you must download the installer from the Tableau website. For more information, see Install tabcmd below.

Install tabcmd

Note: These instructions are for installing the tabcmd 1.0 command line utility. To install the tabcmd 2.0 command-line utility, go to Tableau tabcmd (The link opens in a new window) (new window).

When Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud is upgraded to a new version, if an updated version of tabcmd is required, you can download it from the Tableau Server Versions page on the Tableau website.

For Tableau Server, we recommend that you download the version corresponding to your server version. For Tableau Cloud, we recommend that you always download the latest version to avoid problems caused by version incompatibilities. In both cases, using an outdated version of tabcmd can generate errors and unpredictable results.

Open a web browser and go to the Tableau Server Versions page (The link opens in a new window). Go to this page even if you are using Tableau Online.

If you are using :

• Tableau Cloud, select the latest version of Tableau Server.
• Tableau Server (Windows or Linux): Select the version corresponding to the version of your server.

In both cases, if the expanded information shows the maintenance versions, select the most recent maintenance version or the one corresponding to your server version.

You will then access the release notes page, called Resolved Issues, where you can read about security improvements and resolved issues.

Scroll down to the Download Files section under the solved problems, and select the tabcmd download link compatible with the computer on which you will execute the tabcmd commands.

In the rest of the steps, this computer is called the “tabcmd computer”.

Save the installer to the tabcmd computer or to a location accessible from this computer.

Complete the installation steps according to the operating system of the tabcmd computer :

By default, tabcmd is set to C: \Program Files\Tableau\Tableau Server\\extras\Command Line Utility . You can change this during the installation and we recommend that you install tabcmd on a folder named tabcmd at the root of the C drive: \( C: \tabcmd ). This will make it easier to locate and run, and will adapt to certain limitations with the Windows operating system if you add the tabcmd directory to the Windows PATH path.

Note The tabcmd installer does not add the tabcmd directory to the Windows PATH variable. You can add it manually or specify the full path of tabcmd each time you call it.

You can install tabcmd in two ways on Windows :

Double-click on the installer to follow the steps in the user interface :

Accept the license agreement.

If you want to perform the installation in a location other than the default, click Customize and type or navigate to the location where you want to install tabcmd.

Click on Install.

If prompted by the Windows Defender firewall or user account control, click Allow Access.

Run the installer from a command prompt :

Open a command prompt as an administrator on the tabcmd computer.

Navigate to the directory where you copied the tabcmd installer.

Installation in a location other than the default :

For a complete list of command-line options that you can use with the tabcmd installer, run the installer with a /?. For more information about the tabcmd installer command-line options, see Installation switches and properties for tabcmd (Windows).

The tabcmd installer creates logs in C: \Users\\AppData\Local\Temp which you can use if you have problems installing tabcmd. The logs use the Tableau_Server_Command_Line_Utility_ naming convention()_##############. log .

Note: To run tabcmd on a Linux computer, you must have Java 11 installed. On RHEL-type systems, this will be installed as a dependency when installing tabcmd. On Ubuntu systems, you must install Java 11 separately if it is not already installed.

Since July 2022, Debian distributions are no longer supported. For more information, check out this post from the Tableau Community (The link opens in a new window).

Log in as a user with sudo access to the tabcmd computer.

Navigate to the directory where you copied the package to. rpm or . deb downloaded.

On RHEL-like distributions, including CentOS, run the following command :

sudo yum install tableau-tabcmd-. noarch. rpm

On Ubuntu, run the following command :

sudo apt-get install ./table-tabcmd-_all. deb

To uninstall tabcmd from a Linux computer, see the documentation for the Linux variety you are running.

(Optional) Add the fully qualified location where tabcmd is installed to your system path so that you can run tabcmd commands without having to change this location, or specify the location with each command. The steps to follow depend on the type and version of your operating system. For more information, see PATH_(variable).

How to use tabcmd

The basic steps of using tabcmd are as follows :

Open the command prompt as an administrator.

On a Windows computer, if you installed tabcmd on a computer other than the initial node, switch to the directory where you installed tabcmd.

On a Linux computer, you don’t need to go to the installation directory.

Run the tabcmd command.

When using tabcmd, you must establish an authenticated server session. The session identifies the Tableau Cloud server or site as well as the user running the session. You can first start a session, then specify your command, or you can start a session and execute a command at the same time.

Important: If you use tabcmd to perform more than one task, you must execute the tasks one after the other (in series) rather than at the same time (in parallel).

Commands (such as login) and options (such a s-s, -u, etc.) are not case sensitive, but the values you provide (for example User@Example. com ) are case-sensitive.

Example

The following command presents the start of a session with a Tableau Server instance called tabserver. mycompany. com :

The following example shows a command to delete a workbook named Sales_Workbook :

Here’s how to successfully complete the entire procedure explained above in a single command-note that you will not need a login :

A Tableau Server instance can host multiple sites. When a workbook is located on the default site of a multisite server, you do not need to specify that it is the default site, the above command is sufficient. However, if the command applies to an element of a site other than the default one, you must specify the ID of the site concerned (refer to the login section). Here is the same command for a workbook located on the West Coast Sales site (wsales site ID) :

Th e-s, -t, -u an d-p options are among the tabcmd global variables, which can be used with any command.

For more information, see tabcmd Commands.

Status messages and logs

When a command executes correctly, tabcmd returns a status code equal to zero. A complete error message for status codes not equal to zero is printed on stderr. In addition, informative or progress messages can be printed on stdout.

A complete log named tabcmd. log (including debug, progress and error messages) is recorded in C: \Users\\AppData\Local\Tableau \ .