Refreshing Data Sources in Tableau Cloud

Use the following instructions to refresh Tableau Cloud live data sources (tds) and extracts (tdsx) from a MS SQL data warehouse or database without using Tableau Bridge:

• Whitelisting Tableau Cloud IP(s) into your firewall to extract SQL data:

  • FYI, each Tableau Cloud site is hosted on a Tableau Cloud Pod, and each pod has one fixed public IP address that can be used for whitelisting purposes. Each pod is hosted in an AWS region such as us-west-2 or ca-central-1.

  • Find your Tableau Cloud IP(s) and whitelist them on your firewall that’s protecting your SQL DB:

    • When you’re logged into your Tableau Cloud with data sources to refresh, copy the pod string from the URL. URL ex.: https://prod-useast-b.online.tableau.com/#/site/dataself/. The pod string is in bold.

    • Search for the pod string on the article to find the IP(s): https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/publish_tableau_online_ip_authorization.htm

    • IMPORTANT:

      • Until early 2025, you might need to whitelist Tableau’s new and old IPs (use the article’s menu to access the Old IP Addresses).

      • Once the IP of a pod has been whitelisted to your SQL’s firewall, there’s no need to whitelist the IP of other Tableau Cloud Sites that belong to the same pod (since they all have the same IP).

      • Tableau periodically changes the pod IPs, so you’ll need to update your IP whitelisting accordingly. Read the article above for directions on how to update/automate this process.

• Be sure the tdsx file has been published with the following configuration: Publishing data sources to Tableau Cloud.

• Ways to refresh data sources:

  • Manually: On your Tableau Cloud site, go to a data source → click its Actions ... → Refresh Extract Now.

  • On Schedule (via Jobs): On your Tableau Cloud site, go to a data source → click its Actions ... → Refresh Extract → fill out the form.

  • Via ETL+: WIP.

  • Note: Once a Tableau Cloud data source is queued to refresh, it might take 1 to 15 minutes for the actual refresh to start processing. So, if it takes 10 minutes to process the refresh of a data source, the queued plus processing time might range from 11 min to 25 minutes.

• Ways to monitor data source refreshes:

  • To see the last time it was successfully refreshed: Go to the data source’s page and look for the Extract date/time right below its name at the top of the page.

  • On the left panel of your Tableau’s site home page, click Jobs to view Jobs with the Extract Refresh/Creation type and their status. Unfortunately, the Job names don’t easily indicate what data sources they are associated with.

  • On the left panel of your Tableau’s site home page, click Site Status → Background Tasks for Extracts, and check out the widgets.