Archiving Tableau

Tableau is a data visualization software company that queries spreadsheets and databases to generate graph-type visualizations and dashboards. Because Tableaus are highly dependent upon human reaction, it can be challenging to capture all necessary pieces required to replay in Wayback. Unfortunately we are not able to devote engineering resources to individual issues with Tableau at this time.

On this page:

• Crawling tableau
• What to expect from archived Tableau dashboards

Crawling Tableau

With known capture/replay constraints in mind, here are the recommendations for crawling Tableau with Archive-it:

1. Expand the scope of your seed to include public.tableau.com
2. Crawl with Brozzler
3. Run a test crawl - because expanding scope can increase the amount of data captured, we recommend running test crawls before committing data directly to your account
4. Use Wayback QA on the archived pages

Sometimes you can find the direct URL for the embedded Tableau by looking for the iFrame source under your browser’s hood. The quickest way to do this is by using the “Inspect Element” feature in your Developer Tools. You can read more about how to look under your browser’s hood and why in our Help Center here. 

If you can find this direct URL, we recommend adding it as a private, One Page “helper” seed and crawling it together with your main seed URL in order to make the most direct and complete capture that we can. For example:

• https://leg.colorado.gov/agencies/legislative-council-staff/severance-tax/ 
• https://public.tableau.com/views/SeveranceTaxRevenue/SeveranceD?:showVizHome=no:embed=y&:display_count=no

What to expect from archived Tableau dashboards

Because elements that require a user’s input, like a form or database, will generally not work in Wayback, most Tableaus will appear as a static image often overlaid with a loading wheel or error message.

You may be able to get a more complete capture of content using manual web crawling software where you can directly activate all of the dynamic functionalities at the time of capture. If you choose to use third-party capture software, please keep in mind that we cannot guarantee Wayback replay of uploaded WARCs that include Tableaus.