/
Tableau Performance

Tableau Performance

How do I troubleshoot my workbook performance?

The first step to identifying an issue in a workbook is identifying what field, calculation or data blend is causing the issue. Once you have identified the cause of the issue, or have reduced the potential issues to a small set of data you can open a ticket with busintel@ucsd.edu for assistance.

  • Reduce the amount of data you are working with.

    • Does the report work with one year? One term/quarter? One month?

    • Does the report work for some years but not others.

  • What was the last thing you added before you saw an error or performance issue? Try removing that item.

    • Does the last item you added increase the number of rows in your report significantly?

    • Does the last item you added trigger a data blend?

  • Help Tableau focus on your visualization. If your report has multiple dashboards or workbooks, separate the report into separate reports.

    • Reports can be set up to appear like one dashboard even though they are several separate workbooks.

  • Help Tableau focus on your data set. If your report has multiple data sources, remove the ones that have no issue.

  • Think about the business. Have there been any changes that would impact the values of a field?

 

How do I improve my workbook performance?

There are a few options but we recommend:

  1. Convert Dimensional Filters to Context Filters or Data Source Filters where available (https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/order_of_operations.htm )

  2. Review the view(s) you are using, can you use a different view with a smaller data set?

  3. Break your report into separate workbooks.  You can link reports so that they appear to be the same workbook but are actually separate.

  4. Add Data Source Filters and create an extract of the data.

  5. In your extract, hide unused fields.

    1. Warning: This step is hard to undo, so make this your last step and save a copy with the fields showing for future use.

  6. Using Activity Hub data?

    1. Request that the blend you are doing is added to a view. Blends in the Activity Hub run faster than blends in Tableau.

    2. Request that a summary view be created. Views with less rows perform better in Tableau.

Why is my workbook suddenly long-running or incorrect?

There are a few options:

  • Tableau may be cached in the browser.  Have the customer clear Tableau when closing browser.

  • Have you added any calculations or blended data recently?

  • Has the data source added an unusual amount of data recently?

How to see queries that a workbook is generating.

There are two options:

  1. How to see the queries using Performance Recording (Tableau Desktop)

    1. Open the workbook in Tableau Desktop.

    2. Go to:
      Help → Settings and Performance → Start Performance Recording

    3. Reproduce the behavior:

      > Open the dashboard/view

      > Apply filters or interactions that trigger the high query activity

    4. Stop the recording:
      Help → Settings and Performance → Stop Performance Recording

      After stopping the recording, Tableau will automatically open a new “Performance Recording” workbook.

      Where to find the queries in the Performance Recording

      In the performance recording workbook:

      > Go to the Events or Timeline view.

      > Look for events labeled “Query”.

      > Selecting a Query event will show:

      • The SQL statement generated by Tableau

      • The duration of the query

      • How often similar queries were executed during the interaction

      > This allows you to see:

      • How many queries are triggered by a single view load

      • Whether queries are being repeatedly executed

      • Which interactions (filters, actions, parameters) are causing additional queries

  2. How to Capture Performance Recording (Tableau Server):

    1. Open your workbook on Tableau Server in a web browser

    2. Add ?:record_performance=yes to the end of the URL

c. Interact with your workbook — navigate through dashboards, apply filters, change parameters, etc. to trigger the queries you want to analyze

d. Stop the recording by refreshing the page or clicking the "Show Performance Recording" button that appears at the bottom

e. Save/Download the Performance Workbook — Tableau will generate a workbook file you can open in Tableau Desktop

Once you open the performance workbook, focus on these key areas:

Events Tab (Most Important): Shows every query executed with details.

Timeline Tab:Visual representation of when queries fired.

Key Things to Look For:

> Query volume — Are you seeing 1,000+ queries for a single dashboard load? That's abnormally high and indicates an optimization opportunity.

> Duplicate queries — If the same query runs multiple times, there may be a caching or calculation issue.

> Query complexity — Look at the SQL being generated. Are there excessive joins, subqueries, or calculations happening at the database level?

Note:
> Performance Recording captures everything that happens during your session, so try to isolate the problematic dashboard/view
> If the workbook is slow, the performance recording itself may take time to generate — be patient!