Tableau Online Help

Version: Current
Applies to: Tableau Online

Your Tableau Online site comes with capacity to support all your users’ analytic needs. A site’s capacity includes capacity for storage and tasks that need to be performed on the site for extracts, metrics, subscriptions, and flows.

Summary

The following table summarizes the capacity allowances for your site by feature. You can find more capacity information by the features listed below.

  Capacity Type Capacity Allowance
     
Storage Site 100 GB
Individual workbook, published data source, or flow size 15 GB
     
Extract refreshes Daily refreshes Up to 8 backgrounder hours per Creator license
Concurrent refreshes Up to 10 jobs
Individual refresh runtime 2 hours
     
Metrics Daily refreshes Up to 8 backgrounder hours per Creator license
Concurrent refreshes Up to 10 jobs
Individual runtime 2 hours
     
Subscriptions Concurrent subscriptions Up to 10 jobs
Individual subscription runtime 2 hours
Individual email size 2 MB
     
Flows Concurrent flows 1 per Resource Block
Individual flow runtime See Job runtime capacity.
     
Visualizations Load time Up to 5 minutes
Query usage size 20 GB
     

Storage capacity

A Tableau Online site comes with site and individual content storage capacities.

  • Site storage: A site comes with 100 GB of storage capacity. Workbooks, published data sources, and flows count toward this storage capacity.

  • Individual workbook, published data source, and flow size: An individual workbook, data source (live or extract), or flow published to your site can have a maximum size of 15 GB.

    Note: If your extract data source exceeds 10 GB in size, we recommend that you consider either using live connection to the database or aggregate the data in the extract to reduce its size. Frequently republishing or refreshing large extracts can be time intensive and usually indicates that more efficient data freshness strategies should be considered.

Visualization capacity

Each site comes with designated capacity to load and query individual visualizations, also known as views. You can find more information about each capacity type below.

  • Load time: A site has capacity to spend up to 5 minutes to load a view.

  • Query usage size: A site has capacity to use no more than 20 GB of memory to query a view that uses an extract data source. The amount of memory needed to query a view can vary depending on the complexity of the data manipulations that Tableau needs to perform to generate the marks in the view.

    Note: Only queries against extract data sources count toward query usage capacity. Queries against data sources that use live connections to the underlying data do not. However, queries against data sources that use live connections might be subject to other query usage capacity enforced by underlying databases.

Views that exceed one or both capacity types might be canceled to ensure enough system resources are available so that other views on the site can load.

Tips for optimizing visualization capacity

Views that exceed visualization capacity can indicate the queries that Tableau must run in order to generate the view might be too complex. In such cases, you can use the following tips to help optimize queries thereby minimizing the time it takes to load views on Tableau Online. Most tips require that you edit the data source or workbook and republish to Tableau Online for changes to take effect.

For more tips, see the Workbook Performance(Link opens in a new window) topic in the Tableau Help.

  • Use data source filters: When you add a filter on a data source, you reduce the amount of data that needs to be generated in the view. Reducing the amount of data can help minimize load times of views. For more information, see Filter Data from Data Sources(Link opens in a new window) in the Tableau Help.

  • Use context filters: Similar to data source filters, context filters reduce the data in the data source but at the sheet level. Context filters work independently of other filters and can significantly reduce the amount of data that needs to be generated in the view. Reducing the amount of data can help minimize load times of views. For more information, see Improve View Performance with Context Filters in the Tableau Help.

  • Decrease date ranges: As a rule, dates require more computing power than other types of data like numbers and Booleans. If the view contains date filters, you can reduce the date ranges or the number of dates that need to be generated to help minimize the load times of views.

  • Reduce marks: Because Tableau must calculate the marks in order to generate the view, the number of marks can impact how quickly the view can load. There are several ways you can reduce marks, including using some of the filters listed above or using sets to filter, custom SQL to aggregate data, and more. For more information, see Reduce the number of marks in the view(Link opens in a new window).

Job runtime capacity

Job runtime capacity is the period of time that a job, or an instance of a task type, is allowed to run before it's canceled to help protect available system resources. Each site comes with job runtime capacities for the following job types:

  • Extract refreshes
  • Subscriptions
  • Flows
  • Metrics

Each extract refresh, subscription, or metrics job type has a maximum runtime of two hours (120 minutes or 7,200 seconds).

Note about flows: For sites that don’t have the Data Management Add-on, the maximum runtime for flows jobs for a site is 60 minutes times the number of creator licenses up to a maximum of 24 hours. If your site has large flows workloads, consider purchasing the Data Management Add-onto get more capacity. For sites with the Data Management Add-on, you can run flows for up to 24 hours per day per Resource Block. If you exceed the time limit no new jobs can be started until the next day. Additional capacity for concurrent flow jobs can be purchased. For more information, see Resource Blocks.

Note about extract refreshes: If a refresh job reaches its maximum runtime, you see a timeout error. For more information about the error and ways you can modify extracts to keep refresh jobs within the runtime capacity, see Time limit for extract refreshes.

Concurrent jobs capacity

Concurrent jobs capacity is the number of jobs, or instances of a task type that can run at the same time. Each site comes with concurrent capacities for the following job types:

  • Extract refreshes
  • Subscriptions
  • Flows
  • Metrics

You can find more information about the concurrent jobs capacity for each job type below.

  • Extract refreshes: A site has the capacity to refresh up to 10 extracts concurrently. Depending on available system resources, refresh jobs can run sequentially or in parallel. Jobs that count toward concurrent refresh capacity include scheduled refreshes, manual refreshes, extract creation, and command line or API calls that trigger refreshes, including appending data incrementally.

  • Subscriptions: A site has the capacity to run up to 10 subscriptions concurrently. Jobs that count toward concurrent subscriptions capacity include generating emails from subscriptions created through Tableau Online directly or API calls that generate the email subscriptions.

  • Flows: If licensed with the Data Management Add-on, a site has a default capacity of 1 concurrent flow job per Resource Block. Resource Blocks support flow jobs. If not licensed with the Data Management Add-on, a site has a default capacity of 1 concurrent flow job, which is the equivalent of having one resource block. If there are no resource blocks available when a flow job starts, the job goes into a queue to wait for a resource block to be available. Additional capacity for concurrent flow jobs can be purchased. For more information, see Resource Blocks. Each user can have a maximum of 4 active flow web editing sessions at one time. If more sessions are opened, the oldest session will be closed.

  • Metrics: Each site has the capacity to refresh up to 10 metrics concurrently. For more information about how metrics refresh, see Create and Troubleshoot Metrics.

Note: If a site exhausts its concurrent capacity for a job, other jobs that are in the queue remain in a pending state until one or more jobs have completed.

Daily jobs capacity

Daily jobs capacity is the number of shared hours each site can spend per Creator license a day to perform all jobs on the site. A server process, called backgrounder, initiates and performs these jobs. A site with more Creator licenses gets more daily jobs (backgrounder) capacity to meet the needs of a larger site population.

Each site comes with daily jobs (backgrounder) capacity to perform both extract refresh and metric refresh jobs.

For example:

If your site has... multiplied by the default time Daily jobs capacity
10 Creator licenses 8 hours Up to 80 hours/day
50 Creator licenses 8 hours Up to 400 hours/day

Daily jobs capacity resets each day at 24:00:00 UTC (coordinated universal time).

About extract refreshes

Refresh jobs that count toward daily jobs capacity include full and incremental refreshes and extract creation, which can be initiated by scheduled refreshes, manual refreshes, and certain command line or API calls.

Notes:

  • As long your site has time remaining in its daily refresh capacity, a refresh job will run regardless of the time it takes for that refresh job to complete.
  • Site admins receive email notifications when a site reaches 70%, 90%, and 100% of its daily refresh capacity.
  • If a site exhausts its daily refresh capacity, any future extract refreshes are canceled and email notifications are sent to content owners alerting them of the refresh cancellation.

Tips for optimizing extract refreshes capacity

If you're managing an extract-heavy environment, Tableau recommends following some best practices to make the most efficient use of your site capacity.

  • Stop refreshing unused extracts. One of the best ways to reclaim capacity for your site is to stop automatic refreshes, either through schedules on Tableau Online or through scripts of extracts that aren’t being used. For more information about deleting a refresh schedule, see Manage Refresh Tasks.

  • Reduce the frequency of refreshes. Another method of reclaiming capacity for your site is to reduce the frequency of extract refreshes. For example, instead of refreshing an extract hourly, consider refreshing an extract daily or only during business hours when fresh data is most useful. For more information about changing a refresh schedule, see Manage Refresh Tasks.

  • Use incremental refreshes instead of full refreshes. To decrease the amount of time an extract takes to refresh, consider performing an incremental refresh of the extract instead a full refresh. For more information, see Schedule Refreshes on Tableau Online.

    Note: Changing from a full to an incremental refresh can be done from Tableau Online only if the extract was configured for incremental refresh in Tableau Desktop before the extract was published. For more information about incremental refreshes, see Configure an incremental extract refresh(Link opens in a new window) in the Tableau User Help.

  • Use live connections instead of extract connections. For views, dashboards, and workbooks whose data needs to be updated frequently, consider setting up the data source to use a live connection instead of an extract connection.

  • Optimize the data in the extract. Improving the performance of an extract can also help reduce the amount of time an extract takes to refresh. There are a number of changes you can make to the extract's data to help its overall performance, such as removing unused fields, using filters to remove unused rows, changing date ranges, etc.

About metric refreshes

Metrics that rely on extract data sources refresh when their extract counterparts refresh and therefore count toward daily job capacity.

Note: Metrics that rely on live data sources refresh every 60 minutes and don't count toward daily job capacity.

Jobs initiated by command line and API calls

In addition to daily jobs capacity described above, a site comes with designated jobs capacity for command line and API calls.

Note: If the number of calls exceed the command line or API calls capacity described above, you see one of the following errors: Unknown 429 or ApiCallError: 429000: Too Many Requests – Too many requests for <job type> ‘api.rest.refresh_extracts’. Please retry after 146 second(s).

Monitor capacity

There are a few tools you can use to help you monitor your site’s capacity: Jobs page and Admin views.

Jobs page

The Jobs page gives you detail about the unique instances of backgrounder tasks, called jobs, within the past 24 hours. You can use the jobs page to monitor extract refreshes, subscriptions, and flow jobs.

  1. Sign in to Tableau Online using your site admin credentials.

  2. In the left navigation pane, click Jobs.

  3. From the filter drop-down menu, under Task Type, select the job type you want to monitor.

For more information on the Jobs page, see Managing Background Jobs in Tableau Online topic.

Admin views

Admin views help you monitor different types activity on your site. You can find more capacity usage information, using admin views, for the features listed below.

  • Storage: You can monitor your site’s storage capacity and check which workbooks, data sources, and flows take up the most space on your site using the “Stats for Space Usage” admin view. Select Site Status > Stats for Space Usage.

    • Next to How Is Space Used on This Site, see the total storage capacity used on your site.

    • Below What Workbooks, Data Sources and Flows Use the Most Space, see a list of your site's content and their sizes.

    For more information on this admin view, see Stats for Space Usage topic.

  • Flows: You can monitor the performance of flow runs. Select Site Status > Flow Performance History. Using the dashboard, under Flow History, click on a mark to see details about the flows job.

    For more information about this admin view, see Performance of Flow Runs(Link opens in a new window) in the Tableau Prep Help.

  • Metrics: You can monitor your site’s metrics jobs by using the “Background Tasks for Non Extracts” admin view. Select Site Status > Background Tasks for Non Extracts, and then from the Tasks filter drop-down, select Update all metrics on a view check box.

    For more information about this admin view, see Background Tasks for Non Extracts.

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