Publishing data sources to Tableau Server & Tableau Online: Tableau Tutorial for Beginners:
If you want to share a data source properly, you need to publish it to the server, and there are a few quirks worth knowing before you do.
- Publishing a data source centralises database access, governance and driver management, lets teams collaborate on a shared source and adds mobility through web authoring.
- A published live connection saves connection details (a TDS) to the server, so every interaction calls the database, while an extract is a snapshot that needs a refresh schedule set up on the server.
- Authentication can either prompt each user for credentials or embed a password, and only extracts can be set to allow refreshes (which is where the server refresh schedule comes from).
- Overwriting a published data source wipes any field-level metadata or descriptions you previously added on the server, so re-apply them after each publish.
- You can switch a workbook between a published source and a local copy using 'create local copy' and 'replace data source', but taking extracts of extracts quickly makes it hard to track what you're actually connected to.
- Why publish a data source1:56
- Preparing the live connection4:14
- Publishing to Tableau Online5:48
- Permissions and authentication8:36
- Live vs published behaviour15:58
- Republishing with a user prompt16:51
- Switching back to a local copy19:23
- Publishing an extract21:12
- Certifying a data source24:36
- Extracts of published sources and pitfalls26:52
0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In today's video, I'm
0:01going to be showing you how to publish a
0:03data source
0:04to Tableau Server. This is part two of a
0:06beginner's tutorial for Tableau Server and
0:09Tableau Online.
0:10And in last week's video, we got a comment
0:12on the video essentially asking to do a
0:15video on
0:15publishing data sources up to Tableau
0:17Server and Tableau Online. Now there's also
0:20a small quirk
0:20here today, I'm only going to cover how to
0:22do this from Tableau Desktop. Tableau Prep
0:25can also
0:25publish data sources up to Tableau Server
0:27or Tableau Online. So I'm not going to
0:30cover that
0:30in this video, this will be another video
0:32that I'll do it some other time. But today,
0:33we're just
0:34going to be using Tableau Desktop. You can
0:36also do this through web authoring, but the
0:38interface is
0:39slightly different. So again, I'll maybe
0:41make a separate video for that. But let's
0:42get stuck in.
0:43Okay, so in front of me, I have Tableau
0:45Desktop open. And I've actually gone ahead
0:48and done some
0:49sort of setup. Now I'm not able to share
0:51the data sources that I'm using today with
0:53you. So this is
0:54going to be one of those videos where you
0:55just watch along and you walk through the
0:57mechanics
0:58as I show them to you on screen. Now what I
1:00've done is I've already set up this test
1:02workbook,
1:02I'm actually in the workbook already. And
1:04if I click on the Tableau logo here on the
1:06top,
1:06you can see that I'm able to go right
1:08through into the view and I'm able to start
1:10using
1:10the workbook. Now this workbook is actually
1:13connected to two data sources, you can see
1:15them
1:15here on the top left, I've got something
1:17called 5tran audit, which is like an audit
1:19table
1:20that comes from a system I use to push
1:22YouTube and Google Analytics data into Snow
1:25flake.
1:25That is essentially an audit table that
1:27tells me how many rows it's written to the
1:29database.
1:30The next data source is a Google Analytics
1:32data source. It's not actually very good.
1:34But in essence, it allows me to look at the
1:36data coming from Google Analytics. Again,
1:38this has been
1:39generated by 5tran, and is being pushed
1:41into Snowflake. And I'm connected to it.
1:43But you'll
1:44notice that it's actually set up as an
1:46extract. So they're both connected to the
1:48same database.
1:49But one is set up as an extract and one is
1:51set up as a live connection. Essentially, I
1:53want to show
1:54you the difference between publishing both.
1:55Okay, so the first question is probably to
1:57cover why
1:58would you publish a data source up to Table
2:00au server or Tableau online? Well, the first
2:02one is
2:03you might want to collaborate, you might
2:04want to work with other people on the same
2:06data source.
2:06And so what you want to do is share your
2:08data source with other people and have it
2:10shared in
2:11a centralized place where you get the
2:13governance and structure that Tableau
2:14server offers,
2:15and makes it available to a group of people
2:17or maybe just another individual. Whatever
2:19you're
2:20trying to do, if you want to share it, you
2:21're going to need to publish a data source
2:23to make
2:23that easy to work with. Now, the other
2:25thing you might want to do is centralized
2:27database access
2:28and driver management. One of the quirks
2:30with connecting to data sources, if you
2:32have to send
2:32people details of how to connect to a data
2:35source, essentially, that can get a bit
2:37tedious. And you
2:38can have people sort of typing in usernames
2:40and passwords all over the place. One of
2:42the benefits
2:43of publishing up a data source is you can
2:45actually almost delegate access to a
2:47database through a
2:48centralized embedded password. And by that
2:50other people can connect to it and access
2:52the data they
2:52need. Or you might decide to publish up a
2:55data set that is an extract, which we've
2:57got here. And what
2:58you want to do is set that data source to
3:01refresh on a schedule, and then let people
3:03connect to that
3:04data source as separate from that database
3:06connection. So essentially using Tableau
3:08server
3:08to schedule the update of that data source.
3:11And then you're also using Tableau server
3:13to give you
3:13some structure and governance around the
3:15data source. Okay, the very last one, which
3:17is not as
3:17commonly sort of reference is the fact that
3:19you might want to, you know, be mobile.
3:21Once you
3:22publish up a data source to Tableau server
3:24or Tableau online, you can access it from
3:26any machine,
3:27including web edit. So in case you're stuck
3:29, and you only got an iPad, you can even
3:31pull up a
3:32browser and start working with a data
3:33source if the data source is published. If
3:36it's not, then
3:36you're going to need to get hold of Tableau
3:38desktop or some tool that can publish the
3:40data source.
3:41And with web edit, you can also create data
3:43sources now, which is a great sort of
3:44addition.
3:45But nonetheless, it just adds a little bit
3:47of mobility. So those are the three key
3:48reasons why
3:49you might want to publish up a data source.
3:51The main reason by far is the fact that
3:53once you
3:54standardize a bunch of settings into the
3:55data source, you're actually able to
3:57publish this up,
3:58and then people are able to take advantage
4:00of that. In 2021.3, there's also some
4:02benefits of
4:03being able to add things like descriptions
4:05to these published data sources. So I'll go
4:08into
4:08the very basic setup today. And in another
4:10video, I'll cover those benefits for the
4:12data catalog as
4:13well. So here you can see I've got two data
4:15sources, the first one I'm going to publish
4:17up
4:17is actually going to be my live connection,
4:19you can see that I've got it here in my
4:20workbook. And
4:21if I actually go to this visualization, you
4:23can see that it's actually connected to
4:25this data set.
4:27Now, one thing you tend to do when you're
4:28publishing up from Tableau desktop is you
4:31tend
4:31to validate what data is actually in there.
4:33And you might need to do some prep or some
4:35cleanup
4:35to the data source. So what I might decide
4:38to do is I might decide to rename this
4:39field, it's got
4:40an underscore. So it's sort of breaking the
4:42naming structure that I'm sort of used to.
4:44So I'll just
4:45go and replace the underscore and five and
4:47set that up to to that. Now everything else
4:50is not
4:51really much to change here, all the data
4:52structure and everything is pretty good. If
4:55I go and grab
4:57this update ID, let's just see if it's a if
4:59it's a text, it's actually quite a
5:01complicated idea.
5:02Essentially, this is the ID for the
5:04specific update tasks that's running. So
5:07there's nothing
5:08we can do to that. And what we might decide
5:10to do is split this up. For whatever reason
5:12, I might
5:13decide to run a data operation on this, it
5:15doesn't necessarily make sense. But I'm
5:17just going to run
5:17the split function on this. And we're going
5:20to ask it to use a hyphen. And we're going
5:22to actually
5:23ask it to just split out everything. So
5:25click OK. And you will see it automatically
5:27figures out that
5:28there's five splits there. And it does that
5:30for me. And now I have the individual parts
5:32of the
5:33split. And I can just go and bring out, let
5:35's say part three of the split. And you'll
5:36see that it
5:37has that structure there. So now that that
5:39's done, I've essentially created some
5:42calculation,
5:42I've done a little bit of data prep to this
5:45. And what I want to do is now publish this
5:47up as is,
5:48okay, so let's go ahead and right click on
5:50this live connection. And you'll see that I
5:53have the
5:53option to publish this up to server. Now
5:55there's a couple of things to bear in mind
5:57here. This is
5:57a live connection. So you might be asking,
5:59well, what is it actually publishing up to
6:01Tableau
6:02server? Well, if you've watched my video on
6:04Tableau file types, you'll know that you
6:06can
6:06actually save this as a saved data source.
6:08Essentially, this becomes a TDS. A TDS is
6:11essentially just a file that contains the
6:14connection details for a database
6:16essentially
6:16tells you what the database is, the
6:19username and the password, and any sort of
6:21metadata that
6:21you've created about the data source. And
6:24it saves it in a specific place on your
6:26computer.
6:27When you publish this up to Tableau server
6:29or Tableau online, you're essentially
6:30pushing this
6:31up to the Tableau server. And then it's
6:33using that information to create the
6:35connection in
6:36Tableau server on Tableau online when
6:38someone connects to it. So let's go ahead
6:39and select this
6:40publish to server option. And you'll see
6:42that I get an option here for Tableau
6:44online. If you use
6:45Tableau server, you'd actually go in and
6:46just type your connection information
6:48straight away. Now I'm
6:49going to connect to Tableau online. And in
6:51this particular setup, it's actually going
6:52to ask me
6:53to log into my Tableau server. So I'll go
6:55ahead and type my password and hit sign in.
7:02And once
7:03I've signed in, it will actually load a
7:05window and it will ask me where I want to
7:07publish this
7:08particular data source. Just give it a
7:10second, you'll see the window pop up here
7:12it is on the
7:13screen. So now I have this little pop up, I
7:15can move it around and notice that it just
7:17says
7:17publish data source to Tableau online. And
7:20it's gone and got some presets for this
7:22data source.
7:23And it's getting it from the default folder
7:26here in my Tableau online setup. Now
7:28actually, what I
7:29did before this video is I created a
7:30project on Tableau online called publish
7:32data sources. And
7:33that's where I'm actually going to put this
7:35data source, I'm going to put all of them
7:37there. And
7:38you can see that it's given the name that I
7:40selected up here in the connection. So you
7:43can
7:43see the five Tran audit is over here on the
7:45top left. But nonetheless, everything is
7:47pretty much
7:48good to go. And what I can now do is I can
7:50actually go down through the settings, I'll
7:52go through this
7:53very slowly. The first one is the project,
7:55the name of the connection and the
7:57description, I can give
7:58this description and it helps to give a
8:00description for metadata purposes. So I'll
8:02call this my five
8:05Tran audit table. Okay, and now that I've
8:09done that, I can go ahead and add tags. Now
8:12tags are
8:13sort of an interesting thing. And you can
8:15place them across all different types of
8:16content and
8:17they sort of persist, it's a nice way of
8:19sort of grouping content without having to
8:20put them
8:21in folders. And but I'm not going to, I'll
8:23add one here so you can see what it means.
8:26So I'll call
8:26this data source, maybe data source. So I
8:28can go and find all my data sources very
8:30easily. So you
8:31can see that that data source tag is added.
8:34Now the next thing is the permissions. Now,
8:36at the moment,
8:37it's set to the same as the project. So
8:39when I publish this up, it's going to
8:40inherit the
8:41permissions that are currently in the
8:43project. That's normally a good thing to do
8:45. If I want to
8:46edit those, though, I can go in here and
8:48edit them myself by clicking Add. And I get
8:50an interface that
8:51allows me to add the permissions that have
8:53been set up. If you haven't done so already
8:55, check out
8:56the previous video that I just recorded on
8:58permissions to get more context.
9:00Essentially,
9:01this interface allows you to control those
9:03settings from Tableau desktop. Now the
9:06thing here is if
9:07you've locked the project permissions to
9:09the project, this is not going to really
9:11work, it will
9:11test how the hey, look, the project
9:13permissions have been set to this. And if
9:15you were to set the
9:16permissions at this level, and maybe move
9:18it into that folder or something, it would
9:20automatically
9:20inherit those project permissions. So don't
9:23worry too much about this. But you can see
9:24here that
9:25I've got different groups, I'm going to
9:26leave everything as default. But by all
9:28means, if you
9:28want to play around with these permissions,
9:31and be very careful how you do this,
9:32because sometimes
9:33you can make it very difficult because this
9:36interface is not as good as doing it on
9:38Tableau
9:38server or Tableau online, as I showed in my
9:40previous video. But you've also got some
9:42pre
9:43presets here if you want to start from a
9:44from a decent sort of foundation. So if you
9:47want to give,
9:48for example, the publish template for this
9:50particular setting, you'll see that it
9:51gives
9:51people the ability to view connect,
9:53download and overwrite this data source.
9:56And then it doesn't
9:58have any settings for moving, deleting and
10:00setting the permissions. And it does allow
10:02people to save
10:03as okay. And it gives us to all users, you
10:05can see that the group here all users are
10:07selected.
10:07And that's why this interface is sort of
10:09weird, because it's not obvious that what
10:11you select here
10:12is actually what's controlling the
10:13permissions. As you see, as I click through
10:15these, you can see the
10:16permissions do slightly change. So be super
10:18careful how you set this up. But I'm
10:20actually going to hit
10:21Cancel, and go back to this simple
10:23interface and just carry on. Now the
10:25authentication here is
10:27selected. And it's saying prompt the user.
10:29And what this will mean is that when
10:31someone goes to
10:31try and use this connection, it's actually
10:33going to ask them for a username and
10:35password. So it's
10:36going to send up the details of the
10:37database, it's going to extract the
10:39username and the password.
10:41If I click Edit, I can actually see that I
10:43get the information about the database. So
10:45I get that I
10:46get the name, I get the connection, the
10:48authentication, what I could do is I could
10:51embed the password. So in this particular
10:53instance, I'd be embedding my individual
10:55password in this
10:56use case, this is okay, because I'm on my
10:58own tablet online instance, I'm going to be
11:00the only
11:00one using it. And I can also do a few
11:02things and set this up. But essentially,
11:05for now, we're going
11:06to leave this as is, I don't get the option
11:08to extract because of course, this is a
11:10live
11:10connection. So it's not going to have that
11:12setting there. Now, if I go down here, you
11:14see that I have
11:14more options. And it also asked me if I
11:17want to update the workbook to use the
11:18publish data source.
11:20Now, if you take this, what will happen is
11:22as soon as you hit publish, it will
11:24essentially change the
11:25connection that we've got set up here on
11:28the top left five tran audit and replace it
11:30with the
11:31publish data source. Okay, so I won't do
11:33that for this first attempt. So just just
11:35to show you what
11:35that looks like, then I'll duplicate this
11:37connection and publish the second one. And
11:39you can see what's
11:40going on. So let me untick that box. And
11:42now you're pretty much ready to go. At the
11:44bottom, you'll see
11:45this option here, tablet online will
11:47temporarily access the credentials provided
11:50to confirm it can
11:51maintain a live data connection. So it's
11:53basically telling you, hey, I'm going to
11:55make a call to the
11:55database just to make sure that I can keep
11:57this connection up wherever you're going to
11:59publish me.
12:00And essentially, when I hit publish, it
12:02will kick off the process.
12:04And in this particular case, it should open
12:08up a browser tab, it has in fact, open up a
12:11browser tab
12:12on my other machine, I'll bring it over
12:14here. And here's the window. So you can see
12:17that it gives us
12:18a successful completion. And you can see
12:19that it's done, you can adjust the
12:21permissions and other
12:22information for this data source. Now that
12:25it's done, you get the standard interface
12:27and setup
12:28that you have for data sources in Tableau
12:31online or Tableau server. And not only that
12:33, you can see
12:34that I have all the fields that I created.
12:36And if I hover over them, you can actually
12:37see the formula
12:38that was used to create them. And also, if
12:41I go to this five trans synced folder, you
12:43'll see that
12:44everything is sort of nicely set up, it's
12:46persisted the names that I had. And we're
12:48pretty much good
12:49to go. Now I can obviously explore some of
12:51this other detail, you can see here that it
12:53's a live
12:54connection, it's got the name of the
12:55database. And if I hit these three dots, I
12:57can go into edit
12:58connection. And you'll see that actually
13:00gives me the ability to double check and
13:02make sure the
13:02connection is working correctly. I'll just
13:04show you how that looks like very, very
13:06briefly, I'll
13:07just grab my password here off screen, and
13:09go in and paste that and hit test
13:11connection. And you'll
13:12see that I'm actually able to test the
13:14connection live on the server and make sure
13:16everything is
13:17working correctly. Now that I've done that,
13:19I can obviously click Save, and it will
13:21just persist
13:22that. So this is a great place to come if
13:24the database credentials change, and you
13:26realize that
13:26something's not working. But for now, we're
13:29going to leave that as is. The other thing
13:31I can do see
13:32any connected workbooks, the connected work
13:34books only can exist once you actually start
13:36building
13:36something with it. And then if I go to the
13:39next tab, you can see that this lineage tab
13:41already
13:42has some information about the lineage of
13:44this data source. It essentially just shows
13:46me on the
13:47right hand side, the database that it came
13:49from the tables that it's using. So you can
13:51see this
13:52five tran audit table is what it's using
13:53from that database. And then it's obviously
13:56got this specific
13:57data source. And everything that's sort of
13:59in here has been described very nicely. And
14:02what we can do
14:03is if you click on each of these actually
14:05gives you a more detailed pop up window
14:07where you can
14:07start to change how things work. Now what I
14:10can do is I can edit the description here.
14:12So I can say,
14:13this field was created in desktop, okay,
14:17and hit save. And now that that's done,
14:21everything is nicely saved, and it's
14:23persisted. And now when I go and look at
14:25this description,
14:26you'll see that it's available there. If I
14:28go back and close this, go back to ask data
14:30. And then I
14:32just start looking at the fields. If I
14:34hover over this particular view, when it
14:36loads up, this is
14:37actually the default view that it loads up
14:40on. When I go to this update split, there,
14:42you'll see the
14:43description is now persisted. This field
14:45was created in desktop, and that's now
14:47named. Now,
14:48in order to use our stator that requires
14:50you to create a lens. But nonetheless, we
14:52're pretty much
14:53good to go. This is everything we need to
14:55do for this data source. There's nothing to
14:56change in
14:57terms of extracts, because it's a live
14:59connection. If I want to use this, I can
15:01just go ahead,
15:02create a new workbook. And I'm doing this
15:04in web edit just to show you this
15:06capability and
15:07boom, our data sources ready to go. It has
15:09this nice tableau icon. And I can of course
15:12, just start
15:12using this. So I can go ahead and get the
15:15number of rows. And we can also go and get
15:17the start date.
15:19And we can just start visualizing this
15:21exactly as we did before. At the moment is
15:23aggregated to the
15:24year, let's get that down to the day. And
15:26you can see a nice little line chart. And
15:27of course, what
15:28I can do is I can bring the start date into
15:31the filters. And I'm going to filter out a
15:33specific
15:34set of months because the first month is
15:36always weird because it does an initial
15:37sync in that
15:38month. And what I'll do is I'll exclude
15:40that month, and then we'll just have a
15:41normal sort
15:42of set of data. So now you can see exact
15:44same information that I had in my chart.
15:47And if I set
15:48it to bar chart, and I swap back to tableau
15:50, you'll see that it's basically the same
15:52chart
15:53that I've connected. Now the difference is
15:55I've used I've done it using the published
15:57data source.
15:58The thing to be aware of is of course, if
16:00it's a live connection, as this is, every
16:02time you're
16:02making a change, it's making a call to the
16:04database. So because it's a live published
16:07connection, the user doesn't necessarily
16:09know that that it's an extract or not. So
16:12basically,
16:12they can't differentiate what kind of
16:14connection is sitting in the background.
16:16All they know is
16:16that they have a connection to the database
16:18. If they were to go back to this particular
16:21page,
16:21and they had access to see this information
16:23, they would be able to see that there's
16:25actually a live
16:25connection. So everything a user does is
16:27actually making a call back to the database
16:29. And in terms
16:30of usage, you could probably use that to
16:32analyze how a data source is being used,
16:34and how different
16:35teams are using it. Now, if I was to
16:37publish that data source with a prompt for
16:39the user,
16:40it would actually ask that user for a
16:41username and login, they would log in and
16:43it would use their
16:44credentials, so it could use my snowflake
16:47credentials manually every time I go and
16:49connect
16:49to the data. Let's go back into tableau.
16:51And what we're going to do now is publish
16:53it again, we're
16:54going to overwrite the existing one. And I
16:56'm going to go to publish to server. And
16:58this time, we're
16:58going to go through a couple of different
17:00mechanics. Okay, so you can see here that
17:02it now tells me
17:03that look, you've already got a workbook
17:05published under this name. And the data
17:07source name is
17:08already in use. So we're going to keep that
17:09we're going to because we're just going to
17:11overwrite
17:11this, we don't really care too much about
17:13this, I'm going to add another tag. And I
17:15'll say that this
17:16is a user prompt. It's a really long tag,
17:20you probably shouldn't add tags that long.
17:24And what I'll do is I'll go back in here to
17:26authentication. And I'll ask it to prompt
17:28the user
17:29and go back out. And you can see that that
17:31changes to prompt the user. And then the
17:34last thing I'll
17:34do this time is I'll tick this box to
17:36update the workbook to use the published
17:38data source. So what
17:39this will do is as soon as I've published,
17:42it will change the connection back to the
17:45example that we
17:46saw on tableau online. So let's just do
17:48this now. And it will see that you'll get
17:50this notification
17:51saying, hey, a database is already in use,
17:54hit yes. And it will take a bit of time.
17:58And you'll see
18:00here on the very top left hand side, just
18:02watch the space over here on the left, give
18:04it a second,
18:05it's thinking about it. And there you go,
18:08it's actually created a new data source for
18:11me. And
18:12then it's opened the tab to show me the
18:13published data source. Okay, so now you can
18:15see that
18:16everything is good, everything is published
18:18. If I try and use this data source, it
18:20actually asked me
18:21to log in. Okay, so this is the prompt that
18:23it was actually looking for before. So what
18:25I'll do is
18:25I'll go ahead and log into this, which is
18:27here, you can just see that it's working.
18:28And we'll make
18:32sure that it works. And I can actually ask
18:35it to remember the password for me
18:37personally, so hit
18:38sign in. And now you can see we've got the
18:42same data source ready to go again, if I go
18:46back to
18:47the lineage, you'll see nothing has changed
18:50here. The five trans synced field is still
18:53there. And
18:54this update field, remember earlier on, we
18:56added some metadata to it, if I click on it
18:58, you'll see
18:58that that metadata has unfortunately
19:00disappeared, because we overwrote it when
19:02we published. So
19:03that metadata is no longer there. Okay. Now
19:06what I can do is I can go ahead and write a
19:09new
19:09description, right new description, hit
19:12save. And now this description is saved to
19:16the data source.
19:17If I go back here, you can see the
19:18descriptions right there. But also when I
19:20click on it,
19:21you can see that it's also there. Now
19:22before we move on, I just want to show you
19:24something,
19:25if we go back to our workbook, and we
19:27decide that we actually want to use the
19:29original connection,
19:30we still can just because it's switched
19:32them over doesn't mean we can't switch it
19:34back.
19:34So if we right click on this, you can see
19:36that it has a bunch of different things,
19:38okay. And you can
19:39see here, there's an option to create a
19:41local copy. What that essentially does is
19:43it looks
19:43at the connection and creates a local
19:45version on your machine, rather than using
19:47the published data
19:48source. If I create a local copy, you'll
19:50see that it asks me where to save it. And
19:52notice,
19:53it has this option for TDS or TDS x, the
19:55very beginning of this video, I talked
19:57about Tableau
19:58file types, check out my video on that if
20:00you haven't seen that yet. And of course,
20:03what you
20:03can now do is bring that file down. So I'll
20:05save it to my desktop. And what it does is
20:08it creates
20:08that local connection. And if we give it a
20:11second, you'll see that it creates a copy
20:14that is an exact
20:15duplicate of the original one. And then
20:17what you can do is if you want to switch
20:18back to the live
20:19connection locally on your machine rather
20:21than the published data source, is you can
20:23right click on
20:24this first one, and select replace data
20:27source and replace it with your copy. And
20:30you'll see that
20:31Tableau will do a switcheroo on the data
20:33sources and it will switch the tick from
20:35the top one to
20:36the bottom one. And at that point, you've
20:38switched over. So essentially, you can
20:40publish something up.
20:41And if you're not happy content, because
20:43you want to work on something locally,
20:44switch it back down and switch between the
20:46two data sources. When you're done testing,
20:49as long
20:49as your two data sources are staying in
20:51tune, you can then sort of make sure
20:53everything stays in
20:54track. Now, it's, I always say it's
20:56actually better to create a new workbook to
20:59publish up data
21:00sources and keep that workbook saved
21:02somewhere than it is to try and manage
21:04these two workbooks
21:06at these two data sources in the same work
21:07book, because you just essentially forget
21:09what you're
21:09doing. And it becomes a mess. Okay. Now for
21:12the next one, we're going to move a little
21:13bit faster,
21:14we're going to publish up an extract and
21:16see what's different about that. So let's
21:18go ahead
21:18and right click on this. Now, if I actually
21:20go back to the blog pages, this is an old
21:22Google
21:22Analytics data dump. So it's not 100%
21:24accurate, but it does have some sort of
21:26recent data,
21:27because it's sort of a merge of two big
21:29data sets. So if I right click on this, and
21:31we go to publish
21:32to server, you'll see that this time, it's
21:34an extract, we are going to get a few more
21:36options.
21:36The first thing here is you can see publish
21:39data sources is the folder that it's picked
21:41. So it's
21:42remembered the previous setting that we had
21:44before, it's taken the name from the data
21:46source again,
21:47which we expect. And we can say, this is an
21:50extract. Okay. Now, the thing about this is
21:54,
21:54as we go down this list, you can obviously
21:56do things like add more information, and
21:58you've got
21:59some permissions. And again, picks it up
22:01from the folder, we don't need to do
22:02anything there.
22:03Now the authentication, it says here
22:05refresh not abled. And the reason it's
22:07saying this is because
22:08this is an extract, an extract is typically
22:10going to need a refresh, because it's just
22:12a snapshot
22:13of the data, it's not going to update
22:15itself unless it's prompted to. So if I
22:17click on Edit,
22:18you'll see that I get a the same
22:19permissions window that I got before the
22:22same connection
22:22window that I got before. And this time, I
22:25have the option instead of embedding the
22:28password,
22:28I have the ability to allow a refresh. Okay
22:31. And now that's done, I'm going to leave
22:32that there.
22:34And once we've done that, you will see this
22:35option about Tableau bridge, it says Table
22:37au
22:37bridge required for on premise data,
22:39essentially, it's basically saying to me
22:41that, hey, if I can't
22:42connect to this data, because it's local to
22:45your business or in your organization, I'm
22:47going to
22:47need Tableau bridge in order to do this.
22:49Now I've actually done a separate video on
22:50how to set up
22:51Tableau bridge, check that out. But
22:53nonetheless, it's basically telling you
22:55warning you that this
22:57is going to need this feature in the future
22:59. Now, we've also got this option to do the
23:01switcheroo.
23:01And we've got the same message here at the
23:03bottom to tell you that hey, it's going to
23:05do a temporary
23:06connection test because it can see that the
23:09extract itself is using a live connection.
23:12So now
23:12let's go ahead and hit publish. And we're
23:14going to update this workbook to use the
23:15published data
23:16source again. So let's go hit publish. And
23:18now let's see what happens. It's typically
23:20going to
23:20open on the other screen, even though I've
23:22got the browser here. Let's wait and see
23:23what happens.
23:26You'll see that it pops up this second data
23:28source, it does a switcheroo. And then it
23:31eventually
23:31deletes this, if you just wait a while
23:33before we switch over, you'll see that it
23:35did it just as we
23:36switched over. So it deleted it. And now we
23:38have the three settings again. And we only
23:40have the
23:40local copy that we made before if I go back
23:42to this tab, you'll see that this is now
23:44published.
23:45And here at the top, you can see that it
23:47says extract. Now I can actually switch it
23:49to a live
23:49connection right here from Tableau server,
23:52rather than having to do on on desktop. But
23:54nonetheless,
23:55again, it's got the same settings and tabs.
23:57So connections, we've got a new one now for
24:00extract
24:00refreshes. And the reason this is here is
24:02because what we did on desktop is we
24:04allowed extract
24:05refreshes, here is where we set them up. So
24:08I can go in here, and I can set this up.
24:10And I can set
24:11this to maybe say hourly refresh, I can hit
24:14Create every Thursday, that's fine, hit
24:16Create. And now
24:18you'll see that refresh refresh schedule,
24:20that's the tongue twister set up there. So
24:23it's ready to
24:24go. Now, if I go back to lineage, you get
24:26the same setup. So you get the information
24:28about the fields,
24:29the database, it came from the tables, and
24:32all the other information you might want to
24:34use. Okay,
24:35so that's pretty much it in terms of
24:37publishing data sources, and I sort of
24:39tried to go through
24:40it as thorough as I possibly can. There is
24:43one nice thing. If I go back to my
24:45published data
24:46sources folder, you'll see that I have the
24:48two data sources here and one says extract
24:50one says live.
24:51With live connections, you do get some
24:54enhanced ability new in 2021.3. Check out
24:57my video on this
24:57particular feature. But if I click on this
25:00little I, you'll see that I have this
25:01option that gives
25:02me a bit more information about this data
25:04source. Now, if you've never done this
25:06before, you've
25:06probably not seen all the items here. So
25:08you have a bit of information about the
25:10data source that I
25:11recreated when I published it up, the
25:13location, the owner and the data source
25:15tags. These were
25:16added when I was creating this data source,
25:18you've got the version history, and you've
25:20got a few
25:21more bits of information that you can use.
25:23Now you can also give it a certification.
25:25Essentially,
25:26if I click edit certification status, you
25:28can give this take and say this data is
25:30certified.
25:31And you can say, Tim has approved this data
25:34source. Okay. So now that we've done that,
25:38hit save.
25:40And not only will this data source now be
25:43certified, but you'll get a nice little
25:45badge
25:46on the data source to let you know that it
25:48's got this special status. Okay. Now the
25:51other thing
25:51you can do when you hit this three dots,
25:53you do get some other setups and control
25:56about this. So
25:56you're able to go in and control this a
25:58little bit more and play around with it.
26:00And essentially get
26:01this absolutely set up the correct way you
26:03want, you can edit the certification as
26:05well, you can
26:06remove it, you can preview how it looks.
26:08And you can even sort of play around with
26:10some formatting
26:11here. So you can see you can add links,
26:13bold italics, images, all of this can be
26:16added to
26:16make this whole certification experience a
26:18little bit nicer. Okay. If I hit cancelled,
26:21and I click on this, you'll see that that
26:23certification is also loaded there. So this
26:25is a nice thing to do. If you've got data
26:26sources that have got a lot of energy and
26:28time put into
26:29them, and they're published data sources,
26:31this is a great way of telling people, hey,
26:33this data
26:33source should be used. This is a trusted
26:35data source, and you should be trying to
26:37use this as
26:38much as you can. Now, that's pretty much it
26:40. This is a live connection. So this is all
26:42sort of set
26:43up. So that's pretty much it, I just wanted
26:45to show you that basic feature. But go back
26:47to my
26:47published data source. Now you can see that
26:50they're here. Now, we're not done yet,
26:52because
26:53things can get even more complex. Sometimes
26:55just sometimes you're working in desktop,
26:58and you're
26:58connected to a published data source. But
27:00you want to connect, you want to protect
27:02yourself against
27:03the odd chance that for example, Tableau
27:05online goes down in your particular region.
27:08Let's say
27:08I'm in EU, and the AWS instance in EU goes
27:11down. And suddenly, if that goes down, I
27:15actually lose
27:15my access to this data source. Every time I
27:17'm doing something here in Tableau, this
27:19connection
27:20here is actually calling out to the Tableau
27:21online instance. So it's working over the
27:23internet. Now,
27:24if you're working in a very bad network
27:26environment, you might actually end up
27:28having a
27:28poor experience. So you can kind of do
27:30something a little bit crazy, you can
27:32actually take an extract
27:33of your published data source, whether it's
27:36a live connection or not. So essentially,
27:39what we can do
27:39here is we can right click on this, go here
27:41, take an extract of our published data
27:43source. And it's
27:44just going to go ahead and create another
27:46extract of our published data source, which
27:49in itself was
27:50an extract of a live connection. So a
27:52little bit of a weird heritage there. But
27:55it actually does
27:56mean that you're able to keep working
27:58should the internet go down, you're able to
28:01just send this
28:01across the workbook. And then when you take
28:04the extract off, it's actually working off
28:06the live
28:06connection. So essentially, what you're
28:08doing is you're pulling the data down to
28:09your computer from
28:10Tableau online, and working with it
28:12absolutely fine. But it can be a little bit
28:14of a tongue
28:14twister, because essentially, you can kind
28:16of lose track of where exactly you are. So
28:18if I right click
28:19on this, and I go to create a local copy,
28:21we think about this, you'll see that it
28:24gets a TDS and TDSX
28:25let's hit save. And when we go to create a
28:28local copy, you'll see that we get the
28:30original extract
28:31that we created. So you're thinking, well,
28:33what is that extract? So you right click on
28:35that. And
28:36you'll say don't use the extract. And you
28:37go to it. And you'll think, Oh, great. Now
28:39I'm going to
28:40get the database connection. And you'll see
28:42it gets the database connection. So when
28:44you basically do
28:45that process, you can end up being in this
28:48sort of maze of not really being sure what
28:51you're connected
28:51to, because you go from a published data
28:54source to an extract, create a local copy,
28:57and you're back
28:57to the original live connection. And you
29:00missed a step somewhere there, right. So
29:02just be super
29:03careful, you don't get your knickers in a
29:05twist in this particular instance, be
29:07always sure about
29:08what you're connecting to, if you right
29:09click on any data source, you can of course
29:11, go to the
29:12properties and get a bit more information
29:14about what exactly you're connecting to and
29:15make sure
29:16it's correct. And just make sure you're not
29:18sort of getting yourself into this mess, I
29:20've got myself
29:21into a bit of a twist, because I've taken
29:23an extract of an extract of an extract, and
29:25then I've
29:25just lost my way. So be sure to check that
29:28out. But I think this video is long enough.
29:30Hopefully,
29:31we've done a very decent guide on how to
29:33publish up a data source and how to get
29:35going. And if you've
29:36got any additional questions about this, if
29:38you'd like to know more, if there's
29:39anything I didn't
29:40cover, if there's more you'd like me to
29:42cover, the comments is the best place for
29:44this, I'm actually
29:45going to be reading these and responding to
29:47them pretty much every single week. So be
29:49sure to flood
29:49the comments, let me know what you'd like
29:51to see a video on, especially if it's about
29:53Tableau Server,
29:54and I'll catch you in the next video.
Publishing data sources to Tableau Online or Tableau Server is integral to maintaining a single source for your data. Publishing also enables sharing data among colleagues; including those who don’t use Tableau Desktop but have permission to edit workbooks in the web editing environment.0:00 Intro0:43 The setup for this video1:56 Why used published data sources?4:15 Publishing up a live connection to Tableau Server & Tableau Online7:12 The publish data source dialog and settings12:02 Finishing off the configuration on the web and using the data source17:04 Publishing without embedded credentials19:22 Creating a local copy of the published data source25:21 Datasource certification26:54 Extracting a published data source