Migrate Workbooks and Data Sources with Extracts
Tableau Server users can publish extracts, which are copies or subsets of the original data. These extracts may be embedded in a workbook or a data source. By default, when you use the Tableau Content Migration Tool to migrate a workbook or data source that contains an extract, that extract is migrated along with the workbook or data source that contains it. The Content Migration Tool gives you a couple of options for controlling this behaviour:
Switching to a Live Connection
You can add the Remove Extract transformation to your migration plan to remove the extract from your workbook or data source during migration. As always, the source workbook or data source will not be modified. The copy of the workbook or data source migrated to the destination
Refreshing Extracts after Migration
You can enable the Refresh Extracts After Migration option in your migration plan to have an immediate extract refresh task scheduled after the workbook or data source is migrated.
We don't recommend using the Refresh Extracts After Migration option if your migration plan also uses the Set Connection Info transformation to change the data connection to point to a different set of data (for example, a different database server or database). When you change the connection information to point to different data and use the Refresh Extracts After Migration option, this can unintentionally expose data in a way that is a potential security issue.
For more information, see Option 3: Refresh Extracts After Migration.
Changing data connections that use extracts
Tableau data connections are either live connections that directly query a data source, or they are extracts of a data source. Extracts are copies or subsets of the original data and can be embedded in a workbook or data source. When present, the views will query data from the extract instead of the underlying data source.
Commonly, you’ll want to modify the data source connection during the migration so that it points to a different database
For example, if you are migrating a workbook from your staging
If your workbook uses an extract, additional work is required. In this scenario, the workbook will be migrated and the live data connection updated. However, the views will still show data from the staging database because it still contains the staging database extract – copied from the source (staging)
Option 1: Use Published Data Sources
You can change your workbooks so that they use published data sources instead. This way, the extract will be managed as part of the published data source, and migrating updates to the workbooks that use that data source can be simplified by not having to worry about the connection to the live database or the data extract.
Option 2: Remove the Extract During Migration
You can add a Remove Extract transformation to your migration plan. This will remove the extract from your workbook, effectively switching the data source to a live connection.
Option 3: Refresh the Extract After Migration
You can use the Refresh Extracts After Migration option in your migration plan. This will migrate the extract along with the workbook but will schedule an immediate extract refresh task for that workbook after the migration is complete.
This option is usually not recommended when used in combination with a Set Connection Info transformation because of potential security issues that it can introduce.
The issue is that the migrated workbook
In a scenario like we’ve outlined above, migrating from a staging to production environment, this may be acceptable, but you should be aware that the users of your workbooks may not be aware that the workbook is showing old/staging data due it being recently migrated and the extract not being refreshed yet.
In other scenarios where you may be using Set Connection Info to change data connections to point to a different set of customer or client data, this could introduce serious security issues where the workbook’s extract contains data from a different client or customer until the extract has been refreshed post-migration.
One way to mitigate this issue is to implement a 2-stage migration. This approach requires you to create two migration plans, one for each step described below, and ensures the workbooks and data sources have an up-to-date extract before they are accessible.
- Stage 1: Migrate your content to a project on your destination site that only administrators have access to. This migration allows you to use the Refresh the Extract After Migration option along with the Set Connection Info transformation to update the data connection, because no unauthorised users will have an opportunity to see the old data, even if the extract refresh fails.
- Stage 2: After stage 1 is complete and you confirm there is a successful extract refresh, run a second migration plan to migrate the content from the stage 1 destination to the final destination where it is visible to end-users.
Who can do this
Tableau site user with an Explorer role or higher. To migrate content, you must have View and Download/Save a Copy capabilities for workbooks on the source site and View and Publish capabilities for target projects on the destination site. For more information, see Permissions.