Scheduling Data Updates

Once content has been published to a Tableau site, the data needs to be kept fresh so that the insights on the dashboards are relevant. Live connections are kept constantly up to date, but extracts contain a point-in-time snapshot of the data. Extracts can be configured to refresh on a schedule. Tableau Prep flows can also be created to combine and transform data before outputting to a Tableau data source on a Tableau site. These prep flows can be scheduled so that the resulting data sources are kept fresh.

Extract Refreshes

Sometimes, live connections to data are not feasible and Tableau extracts are also more performant than live connections. To refresh the data on a regular basis, an extract refresh can be configured. On Tableau Server, the schedules available to run the refresh are configured by the server admin. On Tableau Cloud, the refresh frequency is fully configurable by the user setting up the extract refresh.

When publishing a data source...