I have purchased Tableau Online to share my workbooks with a specific group of people without providing an option to download the actual data I used to create them. But I figured that other users would also need a license to view/edit my workbooks..
My initial plan was to share my published workbooks and put them on my website so that others (that I specify) can VIEW the workbook without offering them a privilege of downloading the data. Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated...
When you publish your workbook to online specify permissions so that users - cannot download the workbook - cannot edit the workbook - cannot view the underlying data
If you give your audience accounts with only viewing permission and you have those restricted permissions for workbooks, then you can simply send your audience links and they will see the visualizations in their browser without having to download workbooks. Even if they did download the workbooks, their accounts would be prevented from looking any deeper into the data than your workbooks show.
Take a look at the Tableau JavaScript API. Once you have your workbooks hosted with Tableau Online you can display them using the API on your own website. Then just share the link to those you want to have viewing rights.
This will be public to whoever has the link though unless you set the location up to require login.
http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/windows/en-us/publish_workbooks_howto.html
http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/windows/en-us/Img/publish9.png
When you see this window, click on a User/group, and click Edit. Tableau has default roles (Viewer, Interactor, etc.). You can modify the Interactor role so that it becomes a Custom role so that someone can't download your workbook, etc.
http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/mac/en-us/publish_workbooks_permissions_add.html
See here for more details on permissions.
