3 Replies Latest reply on Dec 7, 2014 1:51 PM by Dan Huff

    Building a status webpage based on 'systeminfo' XML

    Andrew Macey
    Andrew Macey Dec 4, 2014 5:37 PM

      The standard Tableau Admin maintenance page is great if you have admin access, but you can easily create something roughly equivalent based on 'systeminfo' XML for others (IT operations). View Server Process Status

       

      After applying some CSS to the XML, it'll look something like this.

      sysinfo_with_CSS.png

      An easy way to test it is to save Tableau_status.css and the XML result to another file in the same directory, add the XML-stylesheet line to the XML file, then open it in a browser. CSS tested on 8.1

       

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
      <?xml-stylesheet href="tableau_status.css"?>
      <systeminfo>...

        • 1. Re: Building a status webpage based on 'systeminfo' XML
          Toby Erkson
          Toby Erkson Ambassador Dec 5, 2014 8:28 AM (in response to Andrew Macey)

          Cool!  I like this   Just needs the instructions to be a little more detailed.

           

          Okay, take Andrew's Tableau_status.css file and save it in a directory.  For our example we'll use C:\temp.

          Now open a web browser and to go your Server Admin panel

           

          Replace the word "status" with "systeminfo", hit the Enter key, and you'll see something similar to this:

          Save the file to your directory (for our example remember that we're using C:\temp):

           

          So in our C:\temp directory we have the .css file AND the .xml file:

          Using a text editor (I recommend Notepad++) open your systeminfo.xml file and insert

          <?xml-stylesheet href="tableau_status.css"?>

          after the

          <?xml version=...> tag:

          Save the .xml file and you're done!

           

          Now open the .xml file in a web browser to view the results:

           

          The one big issue with this is that what we did is a manual process and is only accurate at the time the .xml file was generated   So to make this more helpful you, dear reader, will need to create a process to get the .xml file, and add the style sheet xml tag (the .css bit).

           

          I created a process to email the Server admin the status of their Server if it is anything other than OK:

          Tableau Server Status Monitor

          This may be helpful to someone wanting to make the above less of a manual process.

          • 2. Re: Building a status webpage based on 'systeminfo' XML
            Eric McDonald
            Eric McDonald Dec 5, 2014 8:56 AM (in response to Toby Erkson)

            I'm not a web developer but could you not just replace everything after the <?xml-stylesheet  line with an embedded link to the server status URL? Then it would mean you could open your custom URL with one click to a link and no page saving.

            • 3. Re: Building a status webpage based on 'systeminfo' XML
              Dan Huff
              Dan Huff Employee Dec 7, 2014 1:51 PM (in response to Toby Erkson)

              Toby Erkson

               

              For anybody interested in this that wants to make it a little more automated, you can do a tabcmd get http://myserver/admin/systeminfo.xml to download the file regularly.

               

              Dan Huff