Enable Extract Refresh Scheduling and Failure Notification
Your publishers can schedule extract refreshes when two conditions are met:
- Tableau Server is configured to send email messages when extract refreshes fail. This is configured by a Tableau Server Manager (TSM) administrator and is on by default. For details, see Configure Server Event Notification.
- The site or sites in which you want to allow publishers to schedule extract refreshes is configured to send email when the refresh fails. This is configured by a server administrator in Tableau Server and is on by default. The instructions below explain how to do this if it is not enabled.
While you’re enabling scheduling, you can decide whether also to enable sending email to owners of data sources or workbooks that are refreshed when those extract refreshes do not complete successfully. You can read more about these emails below. When you enable refresh failure notification, the owners of the content that has scheduled refreshes can opt out individually by changing their account settings.
Sign in to Tableau Server as a server administrator.
Go to the General tab of the Settings page for the site you want to configure for subscriptions:
- If you have a single site, at the top the browser window, click Settings and General.
- If you have multiple sites, select the site you want to configure and click Settings and General.
On the General page, do the following:
Scroll to the Manage Notifications settings and tick Extract jobs.
If a scheduled refresh for a particular data source fails, the email goes only to the owner of that data source, not to owners of workbooks that connect to that data source.
Under Embedded Credentials, select both options to let publishers embed credentials and schedule extract refreshes. (Automatic refresh schedules require embedded credentials so Tableau Server can directly access data.)
Note: On a multi-site server, failure notifications are a site setting, and embedded credentials are a server setting. To configure embedded credentials on a multi-site server, select Manage All Sites and then Settings.
Managing schedules from the server
In your organisation it might be more appropriate to manage embedded credentials and refresh schedules centrally from the server. If you do that, you might clear the tick boxes in the Embedded Credentials section described in the steps above, so that Tableau Desktop publishers do not see schedule options during publishing.
Managing schedules centrally enables you to distribute extract refresh and subscription tasks, so you can run them when most people are offline. It also enables you to oversee which credentials are embedded in connections.
How refresh failure emails work
The email notification for a failed extract refresh lists the extract name and location on the server, gives the time of last successful refresh, the number of consecutive times the refresh has failed, and suggests the reason for the failure and possible solution.
After five consecutive failures, the refresh schedule is suspended until you or the data owner takes an action to address the cause of the failure, such as updating database credentials or a path to the original data file.
How the last successful refresh date is determined
The last successful refresh date and time are shown when that last refresh occurred within a number of days. By default it is 14 days, and this value is set in wgserver.alerts.observed_days. If the number of days since the last successful refresh exceeds the number specified in this setting, the message in the email shows “not in the last N days”.