Ah, the life of an administrator. Sometimes, your day ends up a little something like this:

  User: My report is slow.

  You: OK, did you modify it recently?

  User: My report was fast, now it is slow.

  You: Wait, you didn’t answer my question.

  User. My report is slow,  and I want the iPhone4 

Sound familiar? You probably hear this all the time on some of the (ahem) legacy BI platforms. 

I’ve already written about the Performance Recorder tool and what a handy critter it is to have when you deal with the occasional “slow” report. 

However as any good admin knows, you really need to have an archived performance baseline of your reports so you can refer back them later if things get hinky.

Tableau Server doesn’t actually let you access a Performance Summary Report that you ran 3 months ago. So, how do you save that information in case of a dark, zombie-filled apocalyptic future when you need them? 

You cheat.

First, find the “template workbook” that is used to generate these reports. 

“Oh, look! it’s in Program Files (x86)TableauTableau 8.0Performance! How interesting!" Grab a copy, don’t even think of editing the template in Performance.

Next, you need find data to plug into the copy of PerformanceRecording.twb.

"Jeepers! Look what’s in ProgramDataTableauTableau ServerdatatabsvctempTableauTemp!" 

You’ll probably want to sort descending on time in this folder, then look inside the newest folders right after you run a Performance Summary Report. 

You’ll be searching for what appears to be data files…like these:

You need all four of these files – don’t forget the Schema.ini file, either. Tableau Desktop needs this to understand what’s in the *.tab files

Drop the *.tab files, Schema.ini and PerfomanceRecorder.twb in the same "archive” folder you’ve created somewhere, and open the twb with Tableau Desktop.

Instant archive: