The Portals for Tableau New Features series is designed to keep users up to date with all the latest features being added to InterWorks' embedded analytics solution, Portals for Tableau.

Please note that Portals for Tableau are now officially known as Curator by InterWorks. You can learn more at the official Curator website.

Portals for Tableau have had the ability to populate the filter and parameter options from the dashboard’s data. This is great if they change for each user or if you just don’t want to type them into the portal when creating the filter or parameter. I feel you. That’s time I would rather spend doing real work, like minecraft dashboarding, too.

However, if you’ve got several hundred or several thousands of options, typing them into the portal’s backend really isn’t feasible anymore. Getting the options from the data is really the best approach. The problem is, getting that much data from the dashboard takes a lot of time. This is precious time when the dashboard isn’t available and interactive, making it excruciating to wait.

While we can’t make that time pass any quicker, we can make it so you only have to endure it once. We’ve added a new feature that allows you to cache those options on a per-user basis for a configurable amount of time. The first time through will still be slow, but each time you load a dashboard with that same filter will be much faster afterward.

To enable this feature, navigate to a filter or parameter you’re populating from the data (Backend > Tableau > Filters or Parameters). Midway down the page, you’ll see a new setting to cache the options. Once you switch it on, you’ll be asked how long to remember those options. Let your preferences be known and save. That’s all there is to it.

One caveat of this new functionality is that we can no longer say that we never store any of your reporting data in the portal for those of you who are security focused. However, we’re only storing the filter options, so it would be the exact same data you would have typed into the portal’s backend anyway. Nothing sensitive is being pulled and stored on the portal’s server, and it’s only stored if you turn on this particular feature. Your security team should still be able to rest easy at night.