How to setup Tableau Bridge for static files with Tableau Online

0:00Hey, it's Tim here.

0:01And in today's video, I'm going to be

0:02showing you

0:03how to set up Tableau Bridge on your

0:05computer.

0:06Now, typically you should actually be

0:07setting this up

0:08in a slightly more reliable place,

0:10but seeing as this is a YouTube video,

0:12I just thought I'd show you how to set it

0:13up

0:13on your laptop.

0:14Now, you'd follow the same instructions

0:17to set it up on any computer,

0:18whether that's a service-based computer

0:21or a computer that's virtual.

0:23Essentially, what Tableau Bridge lets you

0:25do

0:25is connect your on-premise data to Tableau

0:28Online,

0:29because typically, if you have a Tableau

0:31server,

0:31it's held inside of your own environment,

0:33so the physical machine is actually in your

0:36data center.

0:37Whereas with Tableau Online,

0:38the data center is actually in the cloud.

0:40In Tableau's case, it's AWS.

0:43And so you need Tableau Bridge as a

0:44mechanism

0:45for getting your data

0:47from your on-premises infrastructure to the

0:49cloud.

0:50And I'm going to show you how to set that

0:51up

0:51and show you how it works.

0:53So I'm going to go ahead

0:54and hit the Download Tableau Bridge option.

0:57This takes you to this page.

0:58Tableau Bridge is typically updated in step

1:01with all the other releases of Tableau.

1:04Now, it's typically a good idea

1:05to keep it in sync with a version of Online

1:07that you're currently using

1:08to make sure that they're using the same

1:11capabilities.

1:11And also make sure you don't experience any

1:13bugs

1:13between the two versions.

1:15So I've already gone ahead and downloaded

1:17the latest version of Tableau Bridge,

1:19and it's already on my desktop.

1:20You can go ahead and do the same thing.

1:22I'm going to now minimize the browser

1:23and we'll jump to my desktop.

1:25So here's Tableau Bridge on my desktop.

1:28It's just a simple installer.

1:29And when you double click it,

1:30it pretty much runs like a typical Tableau

1:33desktop install.

1:34I'm just going to go ahead and click

1:35that I have read the terms and conditions.

1:37I don't think many people actually do,

1:39but maybe leave this to the procurement

1:41team to do this.

1:42Go ahead and click the Install button.

1:44You'll obviously get this alert.

1:45You want to allow this app to make changes

1:47to your device.

1:49It does need a level of admin rights

1:50because what it's going to be doing

1:52is basically communicating with Tableau

1:54Online,

1:54and it needs specific capabilities in order

1:57to do that.

1:57So you do need to give it this permission.

1:59Okay, once you've installed this,

2:02we'll go ahead and look at how it works.

2:05Okay, great.

2:14It's pretty much running the installation.

2:15It's nearly finished,

2:16and we just need to click this alert one

2:18more time.

2:19And that should be the service installed.

2:21When you've installed it,

2:22you will get this pop-up window here,

2:23which basically says sign into Tableau

2:25Bridge.

2:26You might get an error briefly before this.

2:28Just click OK, it will restart the service,

2:30and it will run.

2:31Now, this is not a desktop application.

2:34If I actually take my mouse here,

2:35you'll see that it's actually on the bottom

2:37here.

2:38You can just see a little icon here

2:40that is basically Tableau Bridge

2:42set up here in my toolbar.

2:44And it's got two options.

2:45You can either run it as an application,

2:47which is what it's doing now, or as a

2:49service,

2:50which basically means that as soon as

2:51your computer switches on,

2:53it's able to run ahead and go and do

2:55the things it needs to do,

2:56even if you're not necessarily logged into

2:58your machine.

2:59So as long as the computer's on,

3:00it's able to carry out the tasks it needs

3:02to.

3:03So I'm gonna go ahead and sign in with my

3:05Tableau Online.

3:06Okay, we've installed Tableau Bridge,

3:08and it's now running on our computer.

3:10We know this because if we take our cursor

3:12and just go down to the bottom,

3:13we can see the toolbar there that it's

3:15connected.

3:16And it's actually connected to our Tableau

3:18Online instance.

3:19You can just see that here, okay?

3:21But of course, there's no linked data

3:22sources found.

3:23So essentially what this is saying

3:24is that Tableau Bridge as a client

3:26is not basically set up to push any data

3:29sources.

3:30So you might ask, well, how do we set this

3:31up?

3:32How do we get some data sources updating on

3:35Tableau Online?

3:37Okay, to do this, I'm gonna open up Tableau

3:39Desktop.

3:39Let's just go ahead and open it up.

3:41And let's just open 2020.3 here on my

3:45Windows machine.

3:46And in order to show you this working,

3:53what I'm going to do is

3:53I'm actually gonna connect to the save data

3:55source.

3:56The reason is, is this save data source

3:58here,

3:58sample superstore, actually connects to an

4:01Excel file.

4:02So it's a really good test case

4:03for how we should be using Tableau Online

4:05to push data sources up to Tableau Online.

4:09So let's go ahead and create an extract of

4:12this data source.

4:13And just go ahead, select the extract,

4:16click extract,

4:17and this will take very little time

4:19because essentially this is a very small

4:22file,

4:23so it shouldn't take long at all.

4:24There you go, it's done.

4:25And now that it's done that,

4:27I'm just gonna right click

4:28and I'm going to publish this to the server

4:31, okay?

4:31And I'm gonna select Tableau Online.

4:33And you pretty much go through this step

4:35as you normally would.

4:37So you just need to enter your username and

4:40password.

4:41And then once you get up the interface

4:43for publishing the data source,

4:46there's actually not much different to

4:48select.

4:48It's exactly the same as you probably would

4:50for any Tableau Online data source.

4:53Let's just wait for this to load before we

4:54carry on.

4:55Here we go.

4:56I'm gonna push it up to the default project

4:58.

4:58I'm gonna call it Superstore.

5:00Same as the project for the terms of

5:02permissions.

5:03And you can see here,

5:04there's a little bit of text about Tableau

5:05Bridge

5:06required for on-premises data, which this

5:09Excel file is.

5:10So let's go ahead and click publish.

5:14And as this goes up to server,

5:17it will open up this window.

5:21Now that it's opened up this window,

5:23this is where we actually set up our

5:25refresh schedule

5:26for Tableau Bridge.

5:28Let's wait for this to load.

5:29And one of the things you'll see

5:34is the ability to schedule and extract

5:36refresh, okay?

5:37And if we go ahead and look at that,

5:40you'll see that I actually have two tabs.

5:42One says recommended and one that says

5:44Bridge Legacy, okay?

5:46Now in Bridge Legacy, what I can actually

5:48do

5:48is I can actually select the computer

5:50that's going to be updating this file,

5:52which in this case is my virtual machine,

5:54this one.

5:55So if I select that, I can pick a schedule.

5:58I can say every week at five on every

6:02single day,

6:02or I could just say daily, Monday, Tuesday,

6:05Wednesday,

6:05Thursday, and Friday at a particular time.

6:08This is probably a wise idea to pick a time

6:11where your computer is gonna be on

6:12'cause it will need to be on.

6:13If it's not on, the extract refresh will

6:16fail

6:16and schedule the refresh, okay?

6:19Now, when we do that,

6:21you see there's two notifications at the

6:23top.

6:23These are called toasts in the web design.

6:25So you see a gray one saying the extract

6:27will be refreshed

6:28and the blue one, and now this one's gonna

6:30disappear.

6:31And now if we actually go back to Tableau

6:33Bridge

6:34on our actual machine,

6:36you'll see that it's loading the data

6:37sources.

6:38And if you just give it a second,

6:39you'll see that Superstore is now there.

6:41So now Tableau Bridge is essentially

6:44communicating

6:45with my laptop to make sure the data source

6:48is up to date.

6:49I can do a couple of things here.

6:50I can obviously edit the connection.

6:53I can schedule the source from here.

6:56All these do is they essentially open up

6:57Tableau Online

6:58and take me directly to this data source.

7:01So it's not like you're doing it inside of

7:02the window here.

7:03You're actually being sent off to Tableau

7:05Online

7:05to finish the setting.

7:07If I go to the extract refreshers tab,

7:10you will see that this is the schedule that

7:11I picked

7:12when I set up this extract refresh, okay?

7:15And the other thing is I can obviously go

7:18ahead

7:19and trigger this refresh, okay?

7:21But I'm gonna show you how to trigger that

7:22from Tableau Bridge itself.

7:24The other thing I want to show you

7:26is that Tableau Bridge itself is sort of on

7:28by default,

7:29but what you do need to do as an admin

7:31is you need to go to the specific settings

7:34for the site

7:35because it's not always on, okay?

7:37If I go to the bridge option here in the

7:40third tab,

7:40you need to make sure that you pay

7:42attention as an admin

7:43to these settings here.

7:44There's a little bit of documentation on,

7:47there's a little bit of documentation on

7:48the Tableau website

7:49that talks about this,

7:50but here you can clearly see that this is

7:52my computer.

7:53It's got my name on it 'cause I'm the owner

7:56.

7:56You can actually pull multiple Tableau

7:58Online clients.

7:59Let's say you have three or four people

8:00with various access to different things.

8:03You can actually use them

8:04as like a distributed load balance setup

8:07that basically allows you to use multiple

8:10configurations

8:12to pull the resources a little bit, okay?

8:14Now, the other thing is you've obviously

8:16got the version

8:16of the Tableau bridge client that I'm using

8:18.

8:18So as an admin, you can see

8:19if I'm actually keeping things up to date.

8:22And in a typical setup,

8:24you'd actually push an updates to the

8:25machine running this,

8:26that it had the most rate, the most recent

8:29client.

8:29The other thing is you can see it's

8:31connected

8:31and the last time it's connected was 10, 17

8:35PM,

8:35which is basically two minutes ago when I

8:37set this up.

8:38So if I now go back,

8:39I'm just gonna go back several steps.

8:42I wanna go back to my data source.

8:45One thing you'll see here is that the last

8:47update

8:48was at 10, 15 PM, okay?

8:50It's now 10, 20 PM.

8:52So let's say I want to trigger a refresh

8:54manually

8:54from my machine.

8:56If I click on the Tableau bridge icon

8:58and I hover over the name of the data

9:00source,

9:01you see this rotating icon here,

9:02which allows us to refresh the data source.

9:05So if I go ahead and click on that,

9:07this will actually run the data refresh.

9:09Now, at the moment I have my Tableau work

9:11book open.

9:12So you might think, oh, maybe I'm doing

9:14some sort

9:14of trickery or hoodoo in the background.

9:16What I'll do is after this run, I'll

9:18actually close Tableau.

9:19So you can see that this is working

9:20without the workbook being open.

9:22But essentially what it's doing is it's

9:24secretly running.

9:25It's almost like a Tableau agent in the

9:27background.

9:28It's going off to get the Excel file

9:30from my location on the machine.

9:32It has this from the point

9:33when I published the data source up.

9:35So it actually understands where this work

9:37book is coming

9:38from and where the data source is.

9:40And then once this is finished,

9:42the data source will be fully refreshed,

9:44okay?

9:45So just let this run,

9:46and then we'll see that Tableau Online has

9:48updated this.

9:49The last time I run this, it took about a

9:51minute to do this,

9:52'cause obviously it's running on my machine

9:53,

9:53then pushing something up to Tableau Online

9:56.

9:56And no doubt Tableau Online is a shared

9:58hosting system,

9:59so it takes a little while for things to

10:01get update.

10:02So we'll just wait for this to finish.

10:04Okay, that's finished.

10:09You can see that it's no longer got the

10:11spinning icon.

10:12That took about a minute.

10:13And now if we go back onto Tableau Online,

10:16note the time here says 10.15.

10:18It should now say 10.21 or 10.20 if I

10:20refresh this page.

10:22So let's have a look at this.

10:23Moment of truth.

10:27There you go.

10:30It says 10.21, which is basically a minute

10:32ago.

10:33So now you can see that this is working.

10:35And what I can do now is I can go ahead

10:37and close my workbook,

10:38'cause I've essentially published that up

10:39to the server.

10:40I don't need to save the workbook anymore.

10:42So now you can see Tableau's no longer open

10:44.

10:44And what I'm now gonna do is run the

10:46refresh again,

10:47just to give you some confidence

10:48that this is working as expected.

10:50Okay, there you go.

10:53That just took under a minute, and now that

10:54's set up.

10:55So now we're looking for a timestamp of

10:56around 10.23.

10:58So let's go ahead and refresh this website.

11:01And there you go.

11:04We have a timestamp of 10.23.

11:05So now you can see this has actually

11:07updated twice.

11:09Okay, I just wanna show you a couple more

11:11things.

11:11If we go to the site status tab,

11:14you'll actually see that we also get this

11:16report here

11:16called Bridge Extract.

11:17And if I go ahead and click on that,

11:19you actually get this report,

11:25which shows you the success rate

11:27of each of the refreshes of Tableau Bridge.

11:29So here you can see that it's run a few

11:32times.

11:32There's actually, the average duration for

11:36the refresh

11:36is about 40 seconds, 42 seconds.

11:39So actually, before when it was taking a

11:41minute,

11:41we can sort of concur that the server

11:43itself

11:43took 42 seconds, and the remaining eight

11:47minutes or so

11:47is essentially just network travel time,

11:49the time it takes for the data to get to

11:52Tableau

11:52and then Tableau to send a response back,

11:55okay?

11:55Now, the duration of extract refreshes

11:57went from a very short time to a very long

12:00time.

12:00This is, I think, purely just basically me

12:02setting it up

12:03for the first time.

12:04Here on the right, you can obviously see

12:05that I see two lines here.

12:07Although it says the duration for the

12:08second one

12:09is 85 seconds, although I'm fairly certain

12:11that only took 45 seconds to a minute.

12:14So what's going on here?

12:16Well, whenever you see something like this,

12:18the first thing I always check to see is

12:20what level of detail are we looking at?

12:22And here, if I actually expand the time,

12:24my hunch is that we've actually got two

12:26refreshes there.

12:27There we go.

12:27So 38 seconds and 47 seconds.

12:30If I just hit the plus one more time,

12:32make sure that it's as granular as it

12:34possibly can be,

12:35then there we go, we actually have the

12:36accurate time.

12:37So we've got slightly weird times here.

12:39I think this is basically because of the

12:41location

12:42of the server in my machine.

12:44But ultimately we can see there

12:46there's three separate configurations

12:48that have been set up there.

12:49So that's working.

12:50You can obviously tweak these reports

12:52yourself.

12:52You can download them, connect back to

12:55Tableau Online.

12:56Or if you're running Tableau Server,

12:57you obviously wouldn't need to do this

12:58because you'd actually have a native access

13:01to your own Tableau Server.

13:03Okay, so we've got to the bottom of that.

13:05That's good to know.

13:06That's pretty much it from this particular

13:08page.

13:09If I go back to the Site Status tab

13:11and I go back to Settings,

13:13then I go back to the Bridge tab at the top

13:15,

13:15you can see that we have the remainder

13:16of these configurations.

13:18So obviously we can allow load balancing.

13:20That's an option.

13:21If you want to know more about how Tableau

13:23Bridge works,

13:24I highly recommend we go to Documentation.

13:26It doesn't make for great YouTube content.

13:28So I highly recommend you just go to Table

13:30au Bridge, KB.

13:33I just always search KB whenever I'm in

13:36doubt.

13:37And if I go ahead and just click

13:38the Tableau Bridge product page,

13:40it basically will explain to you how it

13:43works.

13:44So if I go to this page at the bottom,

13:47it gives you a rundown of how to install it

13:51.

13:51It also gives you some context about Table

13:54au Bridge

13:54and how it works in terms of security.

13:57So if I just scroll down here,

14:00you can see that the very last tab here

14:02on the left-hand side is Bridge Security.

14:04And it goes into a little bit of detail

14:06about the authentication model,

14:08how it works with on-premise data,

14:10things like CSVs, Excel files, and so on

14:12and so forth,

14:13how it works with cloud data sources,

14:15where your data is actually inherently

14:17inside

14:18of your network or databases.

14:20And it gives you a little bit of a rundown

14:22as to what you're gonna need to do

14:24in terms of proxy settings in your own

14:26environment

14:26to make sure that Tableau Online can work

14:28efficiently.

14:29So this is a nice, good resource if you're

14:30an admin

14:31and you need to find this, highly recommend

14:33it.

14:33I'll put a link to this in the description

14:35below.

14:35But otherwise, that's pretty much it.

14:37That's Tableau Bridge.

14:38I've shown you a very, very basic setup of

14:40how to do this.

14:41The last thing to maybe highlight is

14:43you can run Tableau Bridge as an

14:45application,

14:45which is what I've configured it here,

14:47or you can run it as a service.

14:49And actually, when I click on that,

14:50you get this little notification to say,

14:52"Switching to service mode runs live query

14:54and scheduled refresh activities

14:56as long as the computer is on,

14:58whether you're logged onto this computer or

15:00not."

15:01So essentially what that's saying is,

15:02look, as long as the computer's on,

15:04don't even have to be logged in,

15:06if it runs as a service,

15:07it's able to go and do its own thing.

15:09This is specifically, I guess,

15:10for people who want to run this on a

15:13machine

15:14in a virtual environment to just basically

15:16clunk away and do its own thing.

15:18Or you can actually just leave your laptop

15:20on,

15:20essentially going on holiday,

15:22just leave your laptop plugged in,

15:23make sure it doesn't go off,

15:25and just let your laptop sit there.

15:27And as long as you've got access

15:28to the particular files that you need to,

15:30and that doesn't get taken away while you

15:32're on holiday,

15:32it should essentially just work the same

15:34way.

15:35So that's it.

15:36It's a little bit of a longer than normal

15:37video,

15:37but Tableau Bridges is a little bit of an

15:39involved setup.

15:40It's not quite like your desktop or server

15:43online setup

15:44where it's mostly an application that we're

15:46working with.

15:47It's a little bit more complex,

15:48so it just takes a little bit longer.

15:51Now here, you can see that when I click OK

15:53to go into service mode,

15:55it's asking me for my credentials for this

15:57computer.

15:57I actually don't have any

15:58because this is a virtual environment

16:00on this particular machine.

16:01It's essentially running off my Mac,

16:03so this is gonna fail

16:04because I haven't really set this up

16:06correctly

16:06on my Parallels machine.

16:08But otherwise, if you were setting this up

16:10as a service,

16:11you'd go ahead and enter your credentials

16:12and essentially gives the access to do

16:15things on your behalf,

16:16even if you're not logged in.

16:17It's essentially just using your

16:18credentials

16:19in order to do that.

16:20But if I hit cancel there,

16:21it just goes back to application mode

16:23and everything is ready to work.

16:25Thank you for watching.

16:26It's a bit of a long one.

16:27If you've enjoyed this video,

16:28you know what to do, hit the like button.

16:30Give me some feedback below if you haven't.

16:32It all counts for the same thing.

16:34And I'll catch you in the next video.

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