Data freshness policies in Tableau Server & Online : New in Tableau 2021.3

0:00Hey Tim here in Tableau 21.3 Tableau have

0:02added this ability to essentially dictate

0:05the data

0:06freshness policy for live connection in a

0:08particular workbook. Let's take a look and

0:11see

0:11how that works. Now, there is one condition

0:13for this is that you have to be using a

0:14live connection.

0:15This doesn't work on a extracted workbook.

0:18Let's let me just show you this. You can

0:20see here this

0:20doesn't have a live connection to a data

0:22source. If you go to data sources here, you

0:24can see that

0:25these are just two extracts embedded inside

0:27of the workbook. If I go back to the views

0:29option,

0:30this is sort of tricky because you might

0:31think you hit on these three dots to see

0:33this option.

0:34If you click on that, you just get this

0:35drop down. What you actually need to do is

0:37click on this

0:38little eye. This is where you get the

0:40details of this particular workbook. And

0:42you can see here

0:43that I don't get any options for data fresh

0:46ness. It should normally be here and it's

0:48not because

0:48this is essentially an embedded data source

0:50and it's extracted. It's not a live

0:52connection,

0:53so none of the caching really matters here.

0:55Okay, let's go back to my home page. And

0:58what you'll see

0:58is I actually created a workbook literally

1:01two minutes ago. And we're going to use

1:03that. Now

1:04what this is actually doing, let's go ahead

1:06to this workbook. It's a really crap work

1:08book. I've

1:08just created it as a simple demo. And it

1:11essentially shows the view counts on my

1:14videos,

1:14spread out across a bunch of days. Now, the

1:16secret here is that obviously it's messy,

1:18so you can't make it out and that the video

1:20IDs are over here, because no one watches

1:22my videos.

1:22True story. But nonetheless, if we go back

1:25out to the workbook up here, you'll see

1:28that this

1:29actually is using a data source. It's a

1:31live connection and it's connecting to Snow

1:33flake

1:33and it's using a table in my Snowflake

1:35instance to do this. So this is a live

1:37connection, this

1:38should work. So if I go over to the top

1:41here and hit the eye icon, you'll see that

1:43essentially I

1:44now get this data freshness policy area.

1:47And it's actually set to the site default

1:49because I haven't

1:50dictated one, it's got the site default of

1:5212 hours. So essentially Tableau is going

1:55to make

1:55sure the data is as fresh as it possibly

1:58can be over the last 12 hours essentially.

2:01And it's sort

2:02of hard to explain caching in Tableau

2:04Server and online because there's so many

2:07different points

2:08where caching can happen. Caching can

2:10happen in Tableau, caching can happen in

2:12the database. So

2:14even though this says 12 hours, the

2:15database might be doing something

2:16completely different.

2:18So it's really hard to diagnose caching

2:19sometimes, but what this does do is it

2:22gives a level of

2:23certainty about what Tableau is trying to

2:25do, which has always been sort of difficult

2:28with

2:28different points of caching inside of Table

2:30au itself. So you can see here that I've got

2:32the

2:33site default of 12 hours. Obviously if you

2:35hit learn more, it opens up a new tab. This

2:37goes to

2:37the documentation on this feature. So by

2:40all means, absolutely check this out. But

2:42if I go back to

2:42this feature, you'll see that I have this

2:44setting. Now I can always say that this is

2:46live. Tableau

2:47will always get the latest data. This is

2:50important because for some workbooks and

2:52for some use cases,

2:53this is literally the only way to make

2:55absolutely certain that you're looking at

2:57the latest data.

2:58Now this just means that Tableau will send

3:01a request to the database. It doesn't mean

3:04the

3:04database itself will actually send back

3:06something that's not cached. So that's

3:09something to sort of

3:10watch out for. But you can also change this

3:12value of 12. So if I go down here to the

3:14next option,

3:15ensure the data is fresh, I can change this

3:17value every six hours, five hours. I can

3:20even go all the

3:21way up to weeks. If I've got a live

3:22connection that barely changes, I can say

3:24to Tableau, hey,

3:26keep this cache for up to a month. I don't

3:28know when you'd ever use that. But you can

3:30also set

3:30it as low as minutes. So you can say, hey,

3:33every 10 minutes, can you please make sure

3:35that this

3:36is up to date? Okay, so this is a really

3:38nice sort of precise control that we now

3:41have. And you can

3:42set this to a really nice setup. Now, I can

3:45also specify a time this is so powerful. So

3:49if you look

3:49at this, I can actually specify that listen

3:52, at 945, when people log in, after going

3:56through,

3:57I don't know, having their coffee or

3:58whatever, I look at the stat, I can say to

4:00Tableau, hey,

4:01at nine o'clock, every single day, every

4:04single week, whatever you want to do, you

4:06can basically

4:07set this schedule exactly like you can

4:09almost set extract schedules. They look

4:12Monday, Thursday,

4:13Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at nine o'

4:16clock, using the American time zone here,

4:18because this

4:19server is in America, but I can choose

4:21whatever timezone I want. Can you make sure

4:23that this

4:24data source is using live fresh data,

4:27please. And that will make sure that it's

4:30always pulling that

4:31in from that time onwards. So if it gets to

4:33859, it won't. And then at nine o'clock,

4:36boom, every

4:36request at that point onwards will be fresh

4:38. And so the caching will start to pick up

4:40there. And so

4:41this is a nice way to sort of make this

4:44work. Now, the frustrating thing about this

4:46setting is that

4:47you can't set multiple points in the day.

4:49So what you have to do if you want to do

4:51this is really

4:52go back to this option here, and say look

4:54every three hours. And then generally, this

4:57should catch

4:58most of the requirements that you want, I

5:01would like to be able to just type in the

5:03space,

5:04it doesn't seem to be working. It's just a

5:06sort of up and down toggle at the moment.

5:08But that's

5:08pretty much it. That's sort of the feature

5:10in a nutshell, you can use this to really

5:12set how fresh

5:13your data is going to be across the whole

5:15entire tableau product. So that's really

5:16cool to see.

5:17And that's really cool to have. And yeah,

5:19if you enjoyed this video, thanks for

5:20watching. Be sure

5:21to check out all the other videos on Table

5:23au Tim calm, where I go through all these

5:25features for

5:26this release and the past released as well.

5:28And we cover lots of other great content as

5:30well. So

5:30be sure to check that out. Let me know in

5:32the comments what you'd like to see more of

5:34and I'll

5:34catch you in the next video.

5:35Transcribed by https://otter.ai