What is Tableau Bridge?

Using Tableau Cloud to share dashboards is a great way to empower your team with data, but it hits a wall when your data isn't on the public web. If your SQL database or flat files are locked away behind a corporate firewall, Tableau Cloud can't reach them on its own. This is the exact problem that Tableau Bridge was created to solve. This article will explain what Tableau Bridge is, why you need it, and how to get it working for you.

What is Tableau Bridge, Exactly?

Think of Tableau Bridge as a secure data messenger. It’s a piece of software you install on a computer inside your private network that creates a safe, encrypted connection between your on-premise data and your Tableau Cloud site. It essentially builds a secure "bridge" over the gap that normally separates a public cloud service (like Tableau Cloud) from a private data source (like the company SQL server).

Without Bridge, your only option for using private data with Tableau Cloud would be to manually create data extracts on your local machine and upload them. This is slow, insecure, and not scalable. Bridge automates this entire process, allowing your cloud dashboards to stay fresh with data from even the most protected sources, all without having to open dangerous inbound holes in your firewall.

Its primary job is to enable Tableau Cloud to do two things with on-premise data:

• Refresh data extracts on a set schedule.
• Enable live, real-time queries to the data source.

By handling these tasks, Bridge turns Tableau Cloud from a tool for just public data into a viable business intelligence platform for all of an organization's data, regardless of where it lives.

Why Tableau Bridge is Necessary: The "Data Firewall" Problem

To understand why Bridge is essential, it helps to visualize how cloud services and private networks operate. Tableau Cloud, like any Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, exists on servers in the public internet. It can easily connect to other public data sources, like Google Analytics, Salesforce, or a publicly accessible database on AWS. These connections are straightforward because they all happen on the "public" side of the internet.

However, most businesses rightly keep their most sensitive operational data - customer records, financial data, and proprietary information - on databases and file servers inside a private network. This network is protected by a firewall, which acts as a security guard. A firewall's main job is to block unsolicited inbound traffic. If Tableau Cloud tries to send a query directly to your company’s SQL server, the firewall will see it as an unknown external request and block it immediately.

This creates a classic dilemma: how do you let a trusted cloud service access data without compromising your network's security? You could poke a hole in your firewall to allow Tableau's servers in, but that’s a major security risk. This is where Tableau Bridge comes in. It solves this problem by using an outbound connection. Bridge is installed inside your secure network. From there, it initiates a secure, encrypted connection out to Tableau Cloud. Since most firewalls trust traffic that originates from inside the network, this connection is allowed. Once established, Tableau Cloud now has a secure conduit to send query requests back down to your data source, effectively bypassing the firewall barrier without ever weakening it.

Tableau Bridge Connection Modes Explained: Live vs. Extract

Once you have a Bridge set up, it can maintain your data connection in one of two distinct modes: Extract or Live. Choosing the right mode is critical for dashboard performance, data freshness, and the load on your source database.

Extract Connections

An extract is a snapshot, or a saved copy, of your data. When you use an extract, you are essentially pulling data from your on-premise source, optimizing it for analytics, compressing it, and storing it within Tableau Cloud as a .hyper file. Your dashboards and vizzes then query this self-contained, high-performance copy of the data, not the original source.

Tableau Bridge’s Role: For extract connections to on-premise sources, Bridge’s job is to keep that snapshot fresh. You configure a refresh schedule in Tableau Cloud (for example, "update this data every morning at 5 AM"). At the scheduled time, Tableau Cloud tells your Bridge client to wake up. The Bridge then queries the on-premise database, pulls the latest data, builds a new extract file, and pushes it up to Tableau Cloud, overwriting the old one.

Best for:

• Performance: Aggregated dashboards built on large datasets will load much faster from a .hyper extract than from a live query.
• Reducing Database Load: Since queries hit the extract instead of your live database, you protect your operational systems from being slowed down by analytics workloads.
• Data Portability: Extracts can be used offline and are self-contained.

Live Connections

A live connection, as the name suggests, does not store a copy of the data in Tableau. Instead, every interaction with a dashboard - loading a view, applying a filter, clicking a chart - sends a direct query to the original data source for an immediate answer. Any changes in the source data will be reflected in the dashboard the instant it is refreshed.

Tableau Bridge’s Role: For live connections, Bridge acts as a continuous, always-on data tunnel. When a user in Tableau Cloud interacts with a dashboard, the query is immediately passed from Tableau Cloud, through the secure Bridge connection, to your on-premise database. The database processes the query and sends the results back through the Bridge to the user's browser. This whole process happens in seconds.

Best for:

• Real-Time Data: When you need up-to-the-second information, like in an operational dashboard monitoring factory output or tracking live sales.
• Data Governance: Using live connections ensures all data security and access policies defined at the database level are respected.
• Avoiding Data Duplication: Sometimes, company policy or regulations prevent storing data extracts in the cloud.

The choice between live and extract involves a trade-off. Live connections give you the latest data but can be slower and place a heavy load on your source database. Extracts deliver super-fast dashboard performance but with data that is only as fresh as the last refresh.

Getting Started: How to Set Up Tableau Bridge

Setting up Tableau Bridge is a multi-step process that involves an administrator for your company network and a Tableau Cloud site administrator. Here’s a high-level overview of the steps involved.

Step 1: Check the Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have everything you need:

• A Tableau Cloud Site: Your organization must have an active Tableau Cloud site.
• Sufficient Permissions: You need to be a Site Administrator to manage Tableau Bridge settings.
• A Dedicated Machine: Bridge needs to run on a computer that is always on and connected to your network. This cannot be your personal laptop. It should be a dedicated server or virtual machine located within your private network.
• Network Access: The machine hosting Bridge must be able to connect to both your internal data source (e.g., SQL server) and the internet (specifically to your Tableau Cloud URL over port 443).

Step 2: Download and Install the Client

Log in to your Tableau Cloud site as an administrator. In the top navigation menu, you’ll find a link to download the Tableau Bridge client installer. Download it and run the installer on your dedicated "always-on" machine.

Step 3: Authenticate with Tableau Cloud

Once installed, launch the Tableau Bridge client. It will prompt you to sign in to your Tableau Cloud site. This step authenticates the client and links it to your specific site, establishing it as a trusted "messenger" for sending and receiving data.

Step 4: Publish a Data Source from Tableau Desktop

The "wiring" for a Bridge connection is done in Tableau Desktop. Connect to your private, on-premise data source as you normally would. Build your view or prepare your data source. When you're ready, go to Server > Publish Data Source or Server > Publish Workbook.

In the publishing dialog, you will see a section for Authentication. This is where you configure how Tableau Cloud will connect to your private source. The crucial step is under “Data Source.” If Tableau Desktop detects that the source is private (not on the public internet), it will automatically select the option to "Publish with an embedded password" or prompt you to choose a publishing option via Bridge. To maintain the connection after publishing, it must be tasked to be refreshed through Tableau Cloud and in turn Tableau Bridge. In some ways, Tableau Bridge is more of an agent than a program users interact with.

Step 5: Configure the Refresh Schedule

After publishing, navigate to the data source within your Tableau Cloud site. You'll see that it's connected via Bridge. Go to the "Extract Refreshes" tab. Here, you can create a new refresh schedule, specifying how often you want Bridge to update the data - hourly, daily, weekly, etc. For a live connection, you don’t set a schedule, the connection is simply listed as "Live via [Bridge client name]." The final setup step is very dependent on what the on-premise data source is, since database authorization needs to also be managed along with whitelisting necessary for live data connections.

Tableau Bridge Common Pitfalls and Best Practices

Configuring Bridge correctly from the start can save you a lot of troubleshooting down the road. Keep these best practices in mind:

• Choose the Right Machine: Do not install Bridge on a personal workstation that gets turned off at night or goes with you on vacation. It needs a stable, permanently running home with a solid network connection, preferably a server under your IT team's management.
• Use Extracts Whenever Possible: Live connections are resource-intensive. Unless your use case absolutely demands real-time data, stick with scheduled extract refreshes. They provide a much faster experience for dashboard users and protect your transactional databases from being hammered by analytical queries.
• Monitor Your Bridge Clients: As a site admin, you can view the status of all registered Bridge clients from the Tableau Cloud settings. Check this page regularly to ensure your clients are online and running correctly. Tableau also sends email alerts if a scheduled refresh fails.
• Set Up a Bridge Pool: For high-availability, you can install and register multiple Bridge clients and group them into a "pool". If one machine in the pool goes down for maintenance or fails, Tableau Cloud will automatically route data refresh tasks to another available client in the same pool, preventing downtime.
• Understand Network Requirements: Work with your IT department to ensure firewalls allow sustained outbound traffic from the Bridge machine to *.online.tableau.com on port 443. Any network proxies or security software must be configured to allow this traffic as well.

Final Thoughts

Tableau Bridge is a powerful and necessary utility that closes the gap between the public cloud and private data. It securely enables organizations to use Tableau Cloud for reporting and analysis on their on-premise databases and files, offering both scheduled refreshes with extracts and real-time querying via live connections.

For many teams, however, managing servers, network configurations, and data clients like Bridge can feel like a lot of overhead. If your key data lives in cloud applications like Google Analytics, Shopify, Salesforce, or Facebook Ads, setting up complex data infrastructure can feel unnecessary. We built Graphed to be the simplest path from data to dashboard. You connect your data sources with a few clicks, and then build dashboards and reports by just describing what you want to see in plain English, with Graphed handling all the connections and visualizations for you.