Hi Carmelita,

This is a known issue Tableau. You need to upgrade the new release of Tableau to overcome this issue.

Known Issues | Tableau Software

Thanks,

Tharashasnak

I might be able to elaborate on the specifics of the problem ( i am working with Carmelita).

The server is by the way is running 10.1.4, 64 bit.

The report is build on a data source that's set up with a fiscal year starting in September. The malfunctioning charts in question are discreet showing values across months in a given fiscal year (starting from sep through to Aug).

The report works fine in Tableau Desktop and displays correctly with month abbrev. on the X-axis and values on Y with correct month values matching correct months on the X-axis.

But when opening the report on the Tableau Server after having published it, the values are off-set from the X-axis and show as if the order of months were regulare calendar year (Jan through Dec). Even so - the labels on the X-axis are still Sep through Aug.

When you click the Tableau refresh icon on the server, the values jump to the correct month positions...

We have tried to clear the cache in the browser and through tabadmin, we've run tabadmin cleanup and even restarted the server.

The data source is an extract of a join of tables from an Amazon Redshift database and everything was working just fine until we upgraded from Tableau Server 9.3 to 10.1.

To bug-track the problem we've trid a number of tests., re-creating the same simple viz (one measure by discreet months filtered to a single year).

• Publishing old backup of data source and reports that we KNOW worked fine on 9.3 -> Same problem
• Creating minimalist copy of data source containing only fact and date dimension -> Same problem
• Setting Fiscal Year start on minimal data source, then on date dimension and then on both --> Same problem
• Creating data source from Exel --> It works :-o

So it does not work with the extract, but works with an Excel?!

Only thing i need to try is a love connection and observe it it makes any difference.

Yeah, I guess that's it.

In my mind, there is no logical or reasonable explanation to pressing the refresh icon in Tableau Server and the values jump from incorrect (CY) to correct (FY) positions.

I hope my description helped shed som light on the problem at hand.

/Jakob

Unfortunately I think you're just going to have to be patient here and wait for a response from Tableau Support. In the case of bugs within the tool, there isn't really a lot the community can do.

If you attach a workbook which would allow us to replicate the issue I'm sure we could give that a shot and see if there's any ideas we can come up with. 

Thanks Jakob for the great description and testing, nice job!

I agree with Tom, you'll likely need Support's help w/this.

You mentioned that refreshing makes the problem go away, so one workaround is to add the parameter :refresh=yes to your URL, for example: mysite.com/whatever?:refresh=yes

Hi Jeff,

Users access the reports through the server, navigating the project structure on their own. So in my mind, this would not solve the problem in our context of useage.

Unless of course there is a way to configure the server to "always refresh" when opening a dashboard.

/J

That's what I figured you'd say, but just wanted to make sure, since people sometimes work with bookmarked or otherwise published URLs.  You'll have to wait for Tableau Support, and in the meantime warn users that a refresh is required.

BTW, 10.1.5 has been released, so another idea is to spin up a test server instance to see if that will solve the problem.

Still, i really appreciate your input and that goes for everyone else too!

Thank you :-)

I recommended testing the latest release on a test-clone - I'll let you know if it fixes the problem.

/Jakob

Jakob Riis Bentsen wrote:

 

...

Unless of course there is a way to configure the server to "always refresh" when opening a dashboard.

There is.  Set your Tableau Server Configuration as so:

Hi Toby,

I don't think that will solve this issue though and at the same time i think it will impact performance.

Correctness of data is not the issue here - i have already tried to create a minimum spec data source from scratch and replicate the problem using that.

We also tried to force-reset the cache using tabadmin clearcache and tabadmin cleanup to no improvement.

It appears to me that the error occurs when the data points are being plotted on the chart. Pressing refresh - the values stay the same, only they are shifted to map correctly to the fiscal year.

1. You won't know until you try but this does what you wanted, an "always refresh".
   1. We do this because it ensures the cache is not used between users hitting the same report due to confidential data restrictions.
2. Yes, it will affect performance since caching will be greatly inhibited.  How badly it will affect performance I do not know as it will be different for every Server environment.

Have you opened a support case with Tableau yet?  Their help would likely be quicker plus they have a knack at exposing things people forget to tell us here in the forums.

Hi Toby,

That's true - and i have passed on your suggestion to the customers support team :-) They are running the support ticket - I'm just running it by the community to hear if people have similar problems. I'm following thread #583419 called "Tableau Server Refresh Issue - Fiscal Year", which describes a similar problem associated with FY. (security policy won't allow me to post in web-forms ... SIGH)

It's just - I don't think cahce is the culprit here, since the values are fine and the problems affects metadata...

Anyway - i'll let you know when / if we test your suggestion. The workbooks the customer run are already rather performance heavy, so that's a sore spot.

/J