Troubleshoot Subscriptions

"The view snapshot in this email could not be properly rendered."

  If you receive a subscription with this error message, there could be several reasons:

  • Missing credentials: Some views are published with embedded credentials. You may receive the above error if the embedded credentials are now out-of-date, or if the view was republished without the embedded credentials.

  • Database temporarily down: If the view has a live database connection and the database was temporarily down when the subscription was being generated, you might receive the above error.

Can't see images in email

For images of content to display in a subscription email, users subscribed to views, in addition to View permissions, must also have Download Image/PDF permissions. For more information, see Permissions.

Can't subscribe

If you can see a view on Tableau Server and it has a subscription icon () in the upper right corner, you can subscribe to it.

To subscribe to a view, the view you're subscribing to must either have embedded credentials for its data source or not rely on credentials at all. Examples of the latter include a workbook that connects to an extract that isn't being refreshed, or a workbook whose data is in a file that was included with the workbook at publish time. Embedding credentials is a step that happens in Tableau Desktop (see the Tableau Help(Link opens in a new window) for details).

No subscription icon

It's possible to see a view but be unable to subscribe to it. This can happen :

  • The view uses a live database connection: Views with live database connections, where you’re prompted for your database credentials when you first click the view, aren't available for subscription. A subscription includes a view (or workbook), data, and a schedule. To deliver the data required for the view, Tableau Server either needs embedded database credentials or data that doesn't require credentials. Where live database connections are concerned, Tableau Server doesn't have the credentials, only the individual users do. This is why you can only subscribe to views that either don’t require credentials or have them embedded.

Missing attachments

You can add a PDF attachment to your subscription if your administrator has it enabled. If the PDF attachment is missing from your subscription, it might be because the size of the PDF exceeds the email size limit. In Tableau Cloud, each site has a maximum email size of 2MB. For details, see Tableau Cloud Site Capacity.

Starting in Tableau 2024.1, you can send emails with your own sending server, which will allow you to send attachments with a maximum email size of 10MB.

To enable this feature, navigate to site settings, find the Customize Email Notifications section, and check the box next to Use your SMTP server.

Note: If you're using your own sending server, Tableau will attempt to send a subscription email with a subset of the attachment that is under the 10MB limit, but this is not guaranteed. If Tableau can't send the attachment, you'll see a message letting you know that the attachment is too large to send.

Suspended Subscriptions

By default, a subscription is suspended after 5 consecutive subscription failures.

Resume suspended subscriptions

Subscription owners can resume subscriptions:

  • from My Subscription tab in Content Settings

  • from the Subscriptions tab per workbook

When a subscription is resumed, the alert failing count goes back to zero. The next evaluation of the subscription will occur at the next scheduled evaluation time.

Can't set subscription frequency to "When Data Refreshes"

You can set subscriptions to run when an extract refreshes if the workbook uses a connection to a published extract. When creating or modifying a subscription, you might not see a Frequency option if the workbook uses:

  • An extract refresh through Tableau Bridge
  • More than one extract refresh
  • A live data connection

Note: If a workbook's data source contains multiple connections where one connection is to a published extract and the other connection requires Tableau Bridge, you might be able to set the subscription frequency to When Data Refreshes. If selected, the subscription will run on the extract refresh, not the Tableau Bridge refresh.

Missing data quality warnings

Data quality warnings are included in subscription emails when:

  • Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud is licensed with Data Management. For more information, see About Data Management.
  • Tableau Catalog is enabled. For more information, see Enable Tableau Catalog.
  • In site settings, the checkbox under Data Quality Warnings in Subscriptions is selected.
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