Monitor Flow Health and Performance

Applies to: Tableau Data Management, Tableau Prep

After you publish flows and schedule them to run periodically, you want to know that they are running as expected and resolve any issues as they occur. You will also want to monitor and understand the performance of your flows.

This topic describes the various methods that Tableau Server provide to help you monitor your flows.

Detect issues as they occur and resolve them

You can set up Tableau Server to send email notifications when flows fail, or find and review errors on Tableau Server using the Alerts menu or by reviewing the flow pages for the flows that you are interested in. This type of monitoring allows you to detect problems as they occur.

Get notifications when a flow fails:

You can configure Tableau Server to send notifications about flow failure through email, on the Tableau site, or Slack. To set up notifications for your Tableau Server and sites, follow the instructions in Step 2: Configure Flow Settings for your Tableau Server.

View and resolve errors

Note: Starting in version 2020.4.1, you can now create and edit flows directly in Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud. The content in this section applies to all platforms, unless specifically noted. For more information about authoring flows on the web, see Tableau Prep on the Web.

The following errors can happen when running a flow:

  • Connection errors: Connection errors generally happen when Tableau Server is unable to connect to one or more data inputs or is unable to make a connection in one or more output steps.

    • For Input connection errors, use the Edit connections option on the Connections tab to make changes to connection details, then run the flow again.

    • For output connection errors, check the output location for the flow output steps. If the flow output is going to a network share, make sure the output steps are pointing to a safe listed location. After you make any changes republish the flow and try running it again.

      Note: To fix output connection errors for flows that output to a file or network share, download the flow to Tableau Prep Builder, then republish the flow to your server. Flows that output to a published data source or database can be edited directly on the web.

  • Errors in the flow: If there are errors in one or more steps in the flow, you will see an error message. You can edit the flow directly on the web and republish it. You can also download the flow to Tableau Prep Builder, resolve the errors, republish the flow to the server and then run the flow again.

  • Suspended flow tasks: When a scheduled flow task fails to run after a configured number of attempts, the flow task is suspended. By default, a flow task is suspended after 5 consecutive flow tasks failures.

    A flow can have multiple scheduled tasks assigned to it, but only the failed tasks are suspended. All other flow tasks will continue to run unless they have errors. To resolve a suspended task, review and resolve the errors then run the flow on-demand or let the flow run automatically based on the assigned schedule.

    Note: Server administrators can configure the number of attempts before a flow run is suspended using the tsm configuration set option. For more details, see Step 5: Optional Server Configurations.

You can view errors on the following pages:

Flow Overview page

On this page you can see the status of the most recent flow run and any errors. Hover on the error text to review the error details. If a scheduled task is suspended, a warning icon shows next to the schedule. Hover on the icon to view the status.

After you resolve the error that caused the flow to fail or the task to be suspended, you can run the flow manually or let the flow run based on the assigned schedule. For suspended flow tasks, click the Go to Scheduled Task link on the tooltip for the suspended task to navigate to the Scheduled Tasks page and click the Resume Scheduled Tasks button to resume the suspended tasks.

Connections page

The Connections page shows the most recent status and any related connectivity errors. To correct input errors, click the More actions menu for an input connection to edit the connection and change the server name, port, user name and password.

To fix output connection errors, edit the flow directly or download the flow in Tableau Prep Builder, correct the file path, then republish the flow to continue running it.

Scheduled Tasks page

Note: The Data Management is required to see this tab.

View the scheduled tasks assigned to a flow. If a scheduled task is suspended, you can see the status of that tasks here and you can manually resume the flow tasks from this page. Before resuming a suspended task, resolve any errors in the flow.

Error details are not shown on this page, but you can review them on the Overview or Run History pages. You can also click the links in the Schedule type column to view the details of what was scheduled and to edit the tasks.

A suspended scheduled task will automatically resume when the flow is republished, if you edit a connection for the flow or manually run the flow tasks. To manually resume a suspended tasks, on the Scheduled Tasks page, click Resume Scheduled Tasks. This resumes all suspended tasks for the flow.

To resume individual tasks, click the More actions menu for a scheduled task and select Resume. You can also click Run Now to run all tasks for the flow immediately.

Run History page

Note: The Data Management is required to see this tab.

The Run History page shows the details of all the flow runs that have either completed or are in progress for each output. View any error details by hovering over the errors in the Errors column. The duration column shows you the run time of the flow.

Note: Starting in version 2020.2.1, the Run Type field shows the refresh type for the output. In prior releases this field showed whether the output was run on a schedule or on-demand. For more information about setting up output refresh types, see Refresh Flow Data Using Incremental Refresh(Link opens in a new window).

Alerts

When a flow fails, the alerts menu is populated with the error details with the option to re-run the flow, or download the flow to troubleshoot.

Note:Flow owners, Server or Site Administrators can see this menu.

Tableau Prep Conductor process status

  • The Tableau Services Manager (TSM) status page is accessible in TSM and can be viewed by TSM administrators. You must be able to log into TSM to see this page.

  • The Tableau Server status page appears in the Tableau Server web UI and is accessible by Tableau Server administrators. If you hover your mouse pointer over the status indicator for a process, a tooltip shows the node name and the port the process is running on. The Tableau Server status page does not show TSM processes.

    When Tableau Server is functioning properly, Tableau Prep Conductor will show as Active or Busy:

    • Active—The process is functioning as intended.

    • Busy—The process is completing some task.

    • Down—The process is down. The implications of this differ depending on the process.

    • Status unavailable—Tableau Server is unable to determine the status of the process.

Who can do this

  • Tableau Server Administrators:
    • Setup email notifications at the server level
    • Set up email notifications for a site
    • View errors
    • Resume suspended tasks
    • View alerts
    • view process status
  • Tableau Site Administrators:
    • Set up email notifications at the site level
    • View errors
    • Resume suspended tasks
    • View alerts
  • Flow owners, project leaders and any user who is granted permissions to view the flow:
    • View errors
    • Resume suspended tasks
    • View alerts (Flow owners)
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