In this video, we'll go over common Tableau Bridge
errors as well as the best practices for troubleshooting
Bridge connectivity issues.
First, we'll go over common configuration issues
as well as the first steps you should take when troubleshooting
a Bridge issue.
When making the initial connection set up to the data
source, you first want to connect locally
through Tableau Desktop and then make sure you
publish the data source individually to Tableau Cloud.
You will not be able to connect directly through Tableau
Cloud to the on-premise data source, as this initial
connection needs to be done through Tableau Desktop first.
The only exception to this is a virtual connection
through your Tableau Cloud site which requires you to have
Tableau Bridge already configured and set up on your
Tableau Cloud site.
The best rule of thumb when troubleshooting Bridge issues
is always ensuring you upgrade Bridge to the latest
version, when troubleshooting an issue
as Tableau Cloud is always on the latest version, you
will always want to upgrade Tableau Bridge to ensure it has
the latest maintenance releases and patch fixes.
If you're connecting to a private network data source
and the task type on the jobs page is showing as
extract refresh/creation instead
of sent to Bridge, you will want to ensure that the network
type is set to private network on the edit
connection option under the connections tab of the
data source page.
For intermittent refresh issues where the refresh
only fails occasionally, you wanna make sure
that the Bridge machine meets the minimum hardware requirements
based on our documentation below this video.
If the job is being sent to Bridge on the jobs page,
but the last refresh time is not updating successfully,
you can do a local refresh test on Desktop
installed on the Bridge machine to confirm there
are no connectivity issues between the Bridge machine itself
and the database directly.
We will be going through a hands-on of most of these steps
later in the video but feel free to skip forward if necessary.
Next, we'll go over the most common errors you experience
when connecting to flat files through Tableau Bridge.
First, you want to ensure that you use the UNC
file path when connecting to the flat file on
the shared drive through Tableau Desktop.
A common error you may see is "unable to connect
to the file with the file path name".
If you do not connect
using the UNC file path initially,
another common error you may experience if you're using
Tableau Bridge custom pools is "no pulled
agents assigned", where you need to ensure that you
have the first portion of the file path added
to the private network allow list on the settings Bridge
page in Tableau Cloud.
Third, we will go over on premise and private network
data source connection issues through Tableau Bridge.
First, you will want to ensure that the task type
on the jobs page of Tableau Cloud is showing
as Bridge refresh.
If you do not see Bridge refresh as the task
type on the jobs page, you may want to confirm that
the data source is successfully published individually
to Tableau Cloud and that the network type is set
to private network under the edit connection option
of the connections tab on the data source page.
If you see a "no pulled agents assigned" error
and you are using custom pooling, you may need
to add the domain of the data source to the private network
allow list on the settings Bridge page in Tableau
Cloud as well.
For general connectivity errors, we recommend
inspecting the Tableau Bridge logs which we cover later
in the video or testing with a local refresh
on the latest version of Tableau Desktop installed
on the Tableau Bridge machine.
Lastly, we will go over web data connectors and the
common issues you may experience when refreshing these
through Bridge.
First Tableau Bridge only currently supports refreshing
WDCs that use basic user name and password
to connect to the data source. This means
that the dialog when connecting a Tableau Desktop
will look similar to the screenshot on the right here.
Additionally, web data connectors require
a custom named pool in Tableau Bridge along
with being added to the private network allow list on the
settings Bridge page in Tableau Cloud.
Next, we'll go through a quick hands-on of how to upgrade
Tableau Bridge.
First, we will want to stop Tableau Bridge from running.
By this we can select the up arrow down here on the
bottom. Right,
right, click top of Bridge and then select
exit,
check the box to exit client and stop activities
and then select exit.
After ensuring you've stopped Tableau Bridge from running
as an application, you can also confirm on
the services tab of task manager that
the Tableau Bridge service has also stopped.
You can then navigate to the latest version of Tableau
Bridge using a link below the video to
navigate to our Tableau Bridge releases page
and then install the Bridge client using the installation
overview video that is separate from this video.
Once you're done downloading and installing Tableau Bridge,
you simply need to launch the new client,
enter any credentials prompted for
and then verify that you're on the latest version
by opening the client going to the settings icon
here and selecting about Tableau Bridge. This
can confirm if the upgrade was successful.
Next, we'll go over a few examples. You may see on
the jobs page on Tableau Cloud which is
located here on the left navigation task bar.
First, if you see the task type is listed
as extract refresh slash creation, but
you know it should be pointing to Tableau Bridge with
a Bridge refresh task type, there are a few things
we can check.
The first thing we can check is if you navigate to the data
source page directly is on the connections
tab here, go ahead and select the actions button
here and edit connection.
If the network type down here is not
selected to private network, you will want to
toggle it to private network from Tableau Cloud
and then select save here.
After you have done this, if you had changed network
types, you will want to delete and recreate the
schedule in order to kick in the new
network type creation.
So we'll go ahead and select new extract, refresh
and then create our daily schedule.
And that will kick into effect the new network
type selection that we had selected.
The other thing you want to verify on this page, if
you are seeing the extract refresh slash creation task
type is that you see the connected workbooks
tab here. This means that the data source is
published individually to Tableau Cloud and
that you have published it correctly as
opposed to embedded in the workbook,
which will not refresh with the Bridge refresh
task type.
So now that we've verified both of those, we can go ahead
and do a run now, manual refresh here
and then navigate to our jobs page to verify
that it's sent to Bridge successfully.
Another common error you may see is the not pulled
agents assigned error similar to this one
here where you will want to
ensure that you have added your data source
domain or data source server
to the private network allow list on
the settings Bridge tab here,
the list is down here.
If you want a more in depth coverage of that, I would
encourage you to watch the Custom Bridge Pooling
video on our Tableau YouTube as well, as
that will dive more into that.
Next, we will go over when you see that the status
was successfully sent to Bridge. However,
you're noticing on the data source page that the data
extract, refresh time is not updating successfully.
This means that the job is being successfully sent
to Bridge. However, there's a connectivity issue
or an issue with the Bridge client itself where it is
failing and not successfully pushing back the
refresh to Tableau Cloud.
First, you'll wanna navigate to the My Tableau Bridge
repository folder which is located in the Documents
folder on the Bridge machine by default.
You will then want to close out of the Bridge client completely
by right clicking and then selecting exit and then
selecting close.
You will then want to right click this logs folder and
select to rename and then rename it
to logs underscore backup.
We can go ahead and then launch the new Tableau Bridge
client.
And then once Tableau Bridge is running again, you're gonna notice
that it generated a new logs folder which
will generate a clean log set when we run the refresh
and see if it fails.
Once you've generated the new clean logs folder, you're
gonna want to go back to the data source page and perform
a run. Now, here
we'll navigate to the jobs page to verify that it was
successfully sent to Bridge.
You can then right click the logs folder, click
send to and compress zipped folder.
And this will be the file that you'll send to tech support,
if they're requesting Bridge logs.
If you want to take a look at the logs yourself, you could click
on the logs folder here and I would suggest looking
in the latest Tableau Bridge client
log as this will contain most of the connectivity
error information.
Alternatively to looking in the logs here,
you will probably receive an email notification
of the failure error
message as well.
Another good test we can do is downloading
a local copy of the data source on
Tableau Cloud onto the Tableau Bridge
machine and open it in the latest version of Tableau
Desktop.
You can do this by selecting the three dots up here
and selecting download
and then you will want to open it on the local
Bridge machine in the latest version of Tableau Desktop.
Once you've opened it in Tableau Desktop, you can go
ahead and go up to the data tab up here
hover over the data source name
and then select extract and then
refresh
and then select yes, running that local refresh
will tell you if there are any connectivity errors between
the Bridge machine itself and the database as well.
If you have further questions on troubleshooting common
Tableau Bridge scenarios or gathering Tableau
Bridge logs, please be sure to see
the documentation below the video as well
as review our other Tableau Bridge videos on the
Tableau YouTube channel.
Thanks for watching.