Controlling who can refresh data sources

Seamus Kyle
Seamus Kyle Experian Contributor
in General

Hi, I am dealing with a client who has some requirements regarding refreshing datasets.

Their situation is this:

- They are/ will be loading large numbers of tables from Salesforce.

- They want to create a schedule to refresh these datasets at specific dates/ times. This they know how to do.

- The important thing is that they want to prevent any user from refreshing a dataset at any other time by any other means. That is either directly, via right click refresh, or by running a Workflow with the refresh datasets option ticked.

The challenge is that, when you create a dataset, there is a "allow auto-refresh" option that appears to be global. So if anyone can access that dataset they can refresh it. It also seems that, if you can share that dataset via a View, it is also possible to refresh it.

So I am after ideas/ best practice around this. There are quite a few possibilities but I am not sure I know the best approach.

STOP PRESS: I was just writing this when the update about version 2.14.2 popped up. This has the ability to directly schedule a dataset refresh (rather than having to create a Workflow to do this). This is really good - would this help I wonder?

Comments

  • Henry Simms
    Henry Simms Administrator

    I've run into a similar problem in the past, and the new Data Refresh scheduled task (2.14.2) is certainly one solution. By setting up a scheduled task to refresh the data (eg nightly), you can then remove the "allow auto-refresh" option from the Datasets themselves, which will prevent them from being refreshed ad-hoc via workflow execution (including when the refresh is requested via a View).

    Another option would be to:

    1. Load the data in to a Dataset from your external system (auto-refresh allowed)
    2. Use a workflow's Take Snapshot step to create a copy of the Dataset
    3. Create and share a view based on the snapshot Dataset rather than the original Dataset.
    4. Because the snapshot Dataset is not linked to the external system from which the data was originally loaded, it obviously cannot be auto-refreshed
    5. The downside of this approach is the need for multiple copies of the same data

    I don't know of any way currently to allow auto-refresh on a Dataset, but prevent it when the same Dataset is the source of a shared View and the refresh is triggered via the View. This could potentially be a useful new feature, but it may be overly complex.

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