How to Schedule Tableau Reports

Manually exporting and emailing your Tableau reports is a sure way to spend hours on repetitive work that could easily be automated. Setting up scheduled reports ensures that your stakeholders get the exact data they need, exactly when they need it, without you having to lift a finger every time. This article will walk you through setting up scheduled report subscriptions in Tableau so you can put your reporting on autopilot.

First, A Quick Clarification: Tableau Desktop vs. Server/Cloud

This is a common point of confusion, so let's clear it up right away. You cannot schedule reports directly from Tableau Desktop. Tableau Desktop is the application you use to build your visualizations and dashboards.

The scheduling feature, known as "Subscriptions," is available in Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online). These are the platforms where you publish your completed workbooks for others to view and interact with. Think of it this way:

• Tableau Desktop: The kitchen where you cook your data meal.
• Tableau Server/Cloud: The restaurant where you serve that meal to your colleagues, who can then ask for regularly scheduled deliveries.

To schedule a report, it must first be published from Tableau Desktop to your organization's Tableau Server or Cloud environment.

Why Automate Your Tableau Reports?

Beyond saving yourself a ton of time, scheduling your reports provides a few key benefits:

• Consistency: Everyone gets the same report at the same time, every time. This creates a single source of truth and ensures decisions are based on the latest, consistent data.
• Timeliness: Key decision-makers don't have to wait for you to manually run and send a report. A Monday morning sales report can land in their inbox before they even have their first coffee.
• Increased Adoption: Pushing reports directly to users' inboxes encourages them to engage with the data more regularly. Out of sight is out of mind, so an automated email can be the perfect reminder to check in on key metrics.
• Improved Data-Driven Culture: By making it effortless to access performance data, you empower your entire team to be more data-informed, catching trends and identifying opportunities without needing to be a Tableau expert.

Part 1: Setting up Schedules (For Tableau Administrators)

Before users can subscribe to reports, a Tableau Server or Site Administrator needs to create the available schedules. If you're not an admin, you can skip to the next section, but this is helpful context for understanding how the system works. If you are the admin, this is your starting point.

Schedules define the "when" of the reporting process — for example, "every Monday at 8:00 AM" or "the first day of every month at noon."

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Schedule:

1. Log in and Navigate: Log into your Tableau Server or Cloud site. In the left navigation pane, click on Schedules.
2. Create a New Schedule: In the top-right corner, click the blue "New Schedule" button.
3. Define the Schedule Details: A dialog box will appear where you'll configure the schedule.
4. Set the Frequency: This is the core of the setup.
5. Click Create: Once you've configured the schedule, click the blue "Create" button. The new schedule will now appear in the list under Settings > Schedules and will be available for all users on your site to select when they subscribe to a report.

Part 2: Subscribing to Views and Workbooks (For All Users)

Once an admin has set up schedule options, anyone with the appropriate permissions can subscribe themselves or others to receive a dashboard or a specific view via email.

Step-by-Step Guide to Subscribing:

1. Navigate to the Report: Go to the workbook or specific 'view' (a single sheet/dashboard within a workbook) you want to receive on a schedule.
2. Click the Subscribe Icon: In the toolbar at the top of the view, look for an envelope icon labeled "Subscribe" and click it.
3. Add Subscribers: By default, you are added. You can start typing the names of other licensed Tableau users in the "Subscribe others" field to add them to the distribution list. Note: You can typically only subscribe users who have permission to view the content.
4. Choose Your Format:
5. Customize the Subject and Message: The subject line defaults to the workbook's title. It’s a good practice to customize this to be more descriptive, like "Weekly Sales Performance Dashboard - North America." You can also add a brief, optional message to provide context in the email body.
6. Select the Schedule: In the "Schedule" dropdown menu, you'll see the list of available schedules created by your admin. Select the one you want, like "Weekly Monday 7 AM."
7. Click Subscribe: Once you've configured everything, click the blue "Subscribe" button. You're all set! The report will now be automatically emailed to the subscribers on the schedule you selected.

Key Tips for Better Tableau Subscriptions

Scheduling reports is straightforward, but a few advanced tactics can make it even more powerful.

1. Subscribe to Custom Views

This is one of the most useful features. What if a sales manager only wants to see data for her region? She doesn't need a report for the whole company. She can apply a filter for her region, save it as a custom view, and then subscribe to that specific view.

• Apply your filters, sorts, or selections to a dashboard.
• Click "View" in the toolbar above the dashboard.
• Give your custom view a name (e.g., "Mikaela's West Region View") and click "Save."
• Now, click the "Subscribe" icon. The subscription will be tied to this custom view, so every scheduled report will arrive with those filters already applied.

2. Manage Your Existing Subscriptions

Need to unsubscribe or change the schedule? No problem.

• Click on your user icon in the top right corner of the Tableau Server/Cloud window.
• Select "My Content."
• Go to the "Subscriptions" tab. Here, you'll see a list of all your active subscriptions. You can select any of them to delete, change the schedule, or update the subject line.

3. Use Data-Driven Alerts

Sometimes you don't need a report on a schedule — you need it when a specific event happens. That's where data-driven alerts come in handy. Instead of getting a daily sales report, you could set up an alert to email you only if sales fall below a certain threshold. While not technically a 'scheduled report,' it uses the same notification logic to keep you informed of what matters most, right when it happens.

Final Thoughts

Automating your reports by setting up schedules in Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud is a fundamental step toward creating an efficient, data-driven organization. Subscriptions save you time, improve consistency, and ensure your team has the information it needs to make smart decisions without any manual work.

Sometimes the reporting challenge isn't just within one platform like Tableau but across the many tools your marketing and sales teams use every day. We designed Graphed to instantly connect all those sources - from Google Analytics to Salesforce to Shopify - and allow you to build real-time dashboards just by describing what you want to see. Instead of being a bottleneck for reporting requests, you and your team can get immediate answers and live dashboards, enabling everyone to make better decisions faster.