Run your Flow

Important: Starting in version 2020.4.1, Data Management is no longer required to run flows manually on the web. It is only required (with Tableau Prep Conductor enabled) if you plan to run your flows on a schedule.

To generate your flow output you need to run your flow. When you run the flow, all of your data (not just the data sample you might be working with) is run through your flow steps. All of your cleaning operations are applied to your full data set, resulting in a tidy, clean data set that you can now use to analyze your data.

Note: Starting in version 2021.4.1, when you run flows that include parameters, you'll be prompted to enter parameter values. You must enter required parameter values. You can also enter any optional parameter values or accept the current (default) value for the parameter. For more information about using parameters in flows, see Run flows with parameters.

Flow run options

Run your flows manually, from the command line, using Tableau Server REST API flow methods, or using a schedule.

Run flows manually

When you run flows manually, you can run one flow at a time. You can run the whole flow or run the flow for a selected output.

If running flows in web authoring (version 2020.4 and later) the flow must be published to the server to run it, and you can't run another flow until the first flow is finished, even from a separate tab. For more information, see Publish a Flow to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud.

In Tableau Cloud, the number of flow runs you can perform in a day is also limited by the site administrator. For more information, see Tableau Cloud Site Capacity(Link opens in a new window) in the Tableau Cloud help.

  1. In Tableau Prep Builder or on your server, open your flow.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • From the top menu, click Run to run the entire flow, or click the drop down arrow to select a flow output in the list.

    • On the server, from the Explore page, right-click or Cmd-click (MacOS) More actions and select Run Now from the menu. This will run your entire flow.

    • Click on an Output step in your flow, then in the Output pane, click Run Flow.

      If the flow isn't open on the web you will need to click Edit Flow to open your flow in editing mode, then either click Publish to publish the flow, or accept the prompt to publish the flow, then click Run Flow.

 

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