Transform jobs

Data Studio > Jobs

Jobs are scheduled runs of transforms based on the transform’s tags.

Transform tags

Add tags to transforms so that you can use jobs to run the transforms on a schedule. For example, you could add a “Nightly” tag to a transform, and have a job that runs all the transforms with the “Nightly” tag at midnight every day.

To add a tag to a transform:

1. Make sure you have permissions to edit transforms.
2. Visit the transform in Data studio > Transforms.
3. On the Settings page for a transform, add transform tags.

By default, Metabase comes with hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly tags and jobs that are run on the corresponding schedules, but you can remove or rename those tags, or create new tags. To create a new tag, just type the new tag’s name in Tags field (either when viewing a transform or when viewing a job) and select Create a tag.

Once you’ve tagged a transform, you can create a job that uses that tag to run the transform on the job’s schedule.

Job can use multiple tags, and will run all transforms that have any of those tags. For example, you can have a job “Weekend job” that is scheduled run at noon on Saturdays and Sundays that picks up all transforms tagged either “Saturday”, “Sunday”, or “Weekend”.

Jobs

Data Studio > Jobs

Jobs run one or more transforms on schedule based on transform tags.

To see all jobs, go to Data Studio and click on the Jobs at the bottom of the left sidebar.

To create a new job, go to Data Studio > Jobs, and click on the + New button in the top right.

Jobs have two components: schedule and tags.

• Schedule determines when the job will be executed: daily, hourly, etc. You can specify a custom cron schedule (e.g. “Every weekday at 9:05 AM”). The times are given in your Metabase’s system timezone.
• Tags determine which transforms a job runs, not when the job runs. For example, you can create a Weekdays tag, add that tag to a few transforms, then create a job that runs all the transforms with the Weekdays tag every weekday at 9:05AM.

Jobs will run all dependent transforms

If one transform depends on another, Metabase will run the dependency first, even if that transform isn’t tagged in the job. So if transform B depends on A, Metabase will first run A, even if A doesn’t have a tag.

This means that you can explicitly tag transform A to run daily, and transform B hourly, but because transform B depends on transform A, transform A will also run hourly (in addition to daily), despite not having the tag.

You can see which transforms a job will run (and in which order) on the job’s page in Data Studio > Jobs.

Runs

You can see all past and current transform runs (both manual and scheduled) by going to Data Studio and clicking on Runs at the bottom of the left sidebar. The transform run times will be given in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

You can click on any transform run to see more details about the run, like the error logs. To go to the transform definition from the transform run page, click on the icon next the transform name in the right sidebar.

The “Tags” column in the Runs table will only show the transform’s specific tags. But the run might not have anything to do with those tags. Another job with different tags could have run the transform because jobs will run all dependent transforms.