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Visualize downstream exposures enterprise

Downstream exposures integrate natively with Tableau (Power BI coming soon) and auto-generate downstream lineage in dbt Explorer for a richer experience.

As a data team, it’s critical that you have context into the downstream use cases and users of your data products. By leveraging downstream exposures automatically, data teams can:

  • Gain a better understanding of how models are used in downstream analytics, improving governance and decision-making.
  • Reduce incidents and optimize workflows by linking upstream models to downstream dependencies.
  • Automate exposure tracking for supported BI tools, ensuring lineage is always up to date.
  • Orchestrate exposures to refresh the underlying data sources during scheduled dbt jobs, improving timeliness and reducing costs. Orchestrating exposures is essentially a way to ensure that your BI tools are updated regularly by using the dbt Cloud job scheduler.

To configure downstream exposures automatically from dashboards in Tableau, prerequisites, and more — refer to Configure downstream exposures.

Supported plans​

Downstream exposures is available on the dbt Cloud Enterprise plan. Currently, you can only connect to a single Tableau site on the same server.

Tableau Server

If you're using Tableau Server, you need to allowlist dbt Cloud's IP addresses for your dbt Cloud region.

View downstream exposures​

After setting up downstream exposures in dbt Cloud, you can view them in dbt Explorer for a richer experience.

Navigate to dbt Explorer by clicking on the Explore link in the navigation. From the Overview page, you can view downstream exposures from a couple of places:

Exposures menu​

View downstream exposures from the Exposures menu item under Resources. This menu provides a comprehensive list of all the exposures so you can quickly access and manage them. The menu displays the following information:

  • Name: The name of the exposure.
  • Health: The data health signal of the exposure.
  • Type: The type of exposure, such as dashboard or notebook.
  • Owner: The owner of the exposure.
  • Owner email: The email address of the owner of the exposure.
  • Integration: The BI tool that the exposure is integrated with.
  • Exposure mode: The type of exposure defined: Auto or Manual.
View from the dbt Explorer under the 'Resources' menu.View from the dbt Explorer under the 'Resources' menu.

File tree​

Locate directly from within the File tree under the imported_from_tableau sub-folder. This view integrates exposures seamlessly with your project files, making it easy to find and reference them from your project's structure.

View from the dbt Explorer under the 'File tree' menu.View from the dbt Explorer under the 'File tree' menu.

Project lineage​

From the Project lineage view, which visualizes the dependencies and relationships in your project. Exposures are represented with the Tableau icon, offering an intuitive way to see how they fit into your project's overall data flow.

View from the dbt Explorer in your Project lineage view, displayed with the Tableau icon.View from the dbt Explorer in your Project lineage view, displayed with the Tableau icon.
View from the dbt Explorer in your Project lineage view, displayed with the Tableau icon.View from the dbt Explorer in your Project lineage view, displayed with the Tableau icon.
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