How to keep data refresh from a live data source in Tableau

Have you ever created a dashboard in Tableau connected to a live data source but it doesn’t keep your data updated when you or other person reopens the dashboard?

You may have encountered this situation at some point: You have Tableauin your company and you need dashboards and reports that show live data when users access it. Probably you have done everything right: created the dashboard, which connects to the Tabelau data source with a live connection to your database. So far, so good… But then users complain that the dashboard doesn’t show the latest data, and they have to click on the “refresh data source” button on the dashboard to see the most up-to-date data from the database. Is Tableau not working properly? Is something wrong with the dashboard or the data source? Why isn’t Tableau displaying up-to-date data despite using a live connection?

Posiblemente te has encontrado alguna vez con esta situación. Tenéis en la empresa Tableau Cloud y necesitáis en la empresa un cuadro de mando que muestre el dato lo más actualizado posible cuando se accede al mismo. Para ello habéis creado el cuadro de mando, el cual se conecta a la base de datos con una conexión en vivo o live.

Hasta aquí todo correcto… Pero los usuarios se quejan de que el dashboard no muestra los datos más recientes y tienen que clicar en el botón de “actualizar la fuente de datos” en el dashboard para que se muestre la información totalmente actualizada ¿Por qué ocurre esto? ¿Tableau no funciona correctamente? ¿Se está haciendo algo mal en el cuadro de mando o la fuente de datos?

Why isn’t Tableau Cloud displaying up-to-date data despite using a live connection?

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If the previous situation sounds familiar you’ve probably asked yourself this question. But most likely you are not doing anything wrong. There’s an reason why Tableau doesn’t show, by default, always up-to-date data with live connections. The reason is performance.

When a user accesses a dashboard, Tableau caches the underneath data so that when the next person accesses it, loading the dashboard is faster. This allows users to gain agility by accessing frequently used dashboards more quickly, but has the drawback of not displaying the most up-to-date information by loading cached data until the user clicks on the “refresh data” button to force Tableau to load the latest data from the database instead of the cached data.

Data Freshness Policies

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The answer is: yes, you can change that behaviour. It’s what Tableau calls a data freshness policy. Admin users and workbook owners can change the default configuration for the workbook needed.

How to change the Data Freshness Policy for a workbook

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To check and modify the data freshness policy, you first need to go to the workbook you want in your Tableau environment.

Once you locate Workbook you want to modify, click on the more details section with the three dots […] next to the name of the workbook to show the full workbook details. One of the last options you’ll see is Edit data freshness policy.

Then we will see the current configuration of the data freshness policy for that specific workbook.

If the policy hasn’t been change before you’ll probably see the default value that in Tableau Cloud is 12 hours. If you want up-to-date data everytime a user access the workbook you can chose Always live and save the changes. Now, Tableau will avoid loading cached data and will query the database everytime a user access the workbook.

Other options available in the data freshness policy

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Other interesting options are to reduce a bit those 12 hours or to force Tableau to refresh the data at a certain time. This could be interesting for instance to make sure users see updated data when we know there’s a peak in that workbook’s usage, like first hour in the morning for instance.

For more information about the data freshness policies in Tableau, I’d recommend checking the official documentation for data freshness policies.