Pause and unpause Tableau Server (or Tableau Online) extract refresh tasks. Plug in the name or luid for the workbook you want to pause, and all related extract refresh tasks will be paused until you unpause them.
Workbooks can have upstream datasources, so if you pause a workbook then its upstream datasources should be paused as well.
If you need to stop the extract refresh tasks for a workbook, datasource, or a workbook and its upstream datasources then you're in a bit of a pickle.
You could:
- Suspend an entire schedule and all of its tasks, which stops your workbook's extracts but also goes nuclear on every other task depending on that schedule.
- Manually comb through your extract refresh tasks and delete the ones which you want to temporarily disable, with plans to manually recreate them later.
- Use Tableau APIs to automate what is otherwise a manual time vampire.
This project makes it possible to pause the extract refresh tasks for the specified workbook or datasource. If you point to a workbook, its upstream datasources are automatically detected and they are paused as well.
You can then unpause these extract refresh tasks.
Capabilities are as follows:
- Suspending an entire Tableau Server schedule (Tableau Server only).
- Activating an entire Tableau Server schedule (Tableau Server only).
- Pausing all extract refresh tasks associated with a workbook or datasource.
- Unpausing all extract refresh tasks associated with a workbook or datasource.
If you want to pause or unpause a workbook without impacting its upstream datasources,
you can do this by setting include_upstream=False flag when using the .pause_workbook() and
.unpause_workbook() methods.
There is no REST API to pause and unpause an extract refresh task. This process makes it easy to delete all tasks associated with a workbook (or datasource) and to recreate (unpause) those tasks when the time is right.
Check out the YouTube Demo!
Run this to install the tableau-api-lib package (required to use this project):
pip install -U tableau-api-lib
A lot is happening behind the scenes, which is why this solution leans on both the Metadata API and the REST API.
The Metadata API is used to identify dependencies between workbooks and datasources. When pausing all extract refresh tasks for a workbook, you need to stop extracts related to both the embedded extracts and the published datasources the workbook uses. When pausing tasks for a specific datasource, this is more straightforward as you only need to identify tasks directly related to that datasource. The Metadata API helps us to identify exactly which refresh tasks we need to target.
The REST API is our go-to tool for updating schedules and creating or deleting extract refresh tasks. Additionally, we can use the REST API to query details for our workbooks, datasources, schedules, and extract refresh tasks.
Step 0: run pip install -r requirements.txt to install the required packages.
Step 1: duplicate the file 'src/config/sample_tableau_environments.py' and name this file 'tableau_environments.py'.
Step 2: configure your Tableau environment in the file you just created.
Step 3: fetch the name (or luid) of a workbook or datasource you want to pause.
Step 4: modify the 'src/main.py' file to pause and unpause your workbook / datasource / scehdule of choice!
Consider this a demo of what's possible. Feel free to take this code and adapt it to your own environment as needed!