Published Workbook with Local Data Sources

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Rationale

The VIZYUL™ Published Workbook with Local Data Sources best practice rule fires when a workbook has been published to a Tableau server but references data sources on the computer where the workbook was designed.

Insight

Consider this, publishing a tableau workbook to a tableau server, when one or more of the data connections point to data sources on your local computer, will prevent tableau server from updating the data source automatically when new data becomes available.

This is a rather simple concept to understand.  Let’s say you have an Excel spreadsheet in your My Documents folder that you want to use in tableau to design a dashboard.  So you point tableau at your Excel file and import the data; creating a tableau data extract.  Great so far.  However, it’s important to note that even though you imported the data into tableau, tableau keeps an internal record of the original location of the Excel file you used.  You finish your dashboard and decide to publish the workbook to tableau server for the rest of your team to view.  Everything seems to work fine until a college asks you to schedule a refresh of the data every Sunday morning on tableau server.

You successfully setup the automated refresh schedule only to find on Monday morning that the refresh crashed Sunday morning.  The refresh failed because tableau server has no way to access the original Excel file located in your My Documents folder.  The reason your tableau workbook recorded the original location of this file is to tell tableau server where to look in order to refresh the data.

Here’s a checklist that will help determine which type of data connection supports automated data refreshes on the tableau server.

  • Data Connection Types
    • Live Database Connection (SQL Server, Oracle, TeraData, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc…)
      • NO – Live database connections do not extract data from the origin database.  The data used to render the dashboard is also fresh.
    • Live File Connection (Excel, Access, Text File, CSV, etc…)
      • NO – Although tableau desktop or tableau server will prevent you from publishing the workbook, by creating data extracts for all data connections, refreshing the data will fail on tableau server, if the exact folder location of the original file is not replicated on the tableau server.
    • Tableau Data Extract from Database (SQL Server, Oracle, TeraData, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc…)
      • YES – Automated data refreshes are supported (assuming the tableau server has the necessary permissions to access the database server directly)
    • Tableau Data Extract from Local File (Excel, Access, Text File, CSV, etc…)
      • NO – Refreshing the data will fail on tableau server, if the exact folder location of the original file is not replicated on the tableau server.
    • Live Tableau Server Data Source
      • YES – Assuming the tableau server data source has been configured to access the original data source and has the necessary permissions to access it for data refreshes.

Action

  • Consider publishing all data sources that require automated refreshes to tableau server.
  • Consider the additional resources below for information on how to prepare data extracts for automated refreshes.

Additional Resources

  • http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/windows/en-us/extracting_push.html
  • http://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/mac/en-us/extracting_refresh.html
  • 3 Part Series on Understanding Tableau Data Extracts
    • http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2014/7/understanding-tableau-data-extracts-part1
    • http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2014/7/why-use-tableau-data-extracts-32187
    • http://www.tableau.com/tableau-data-extracts-part3