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title: Tableau Prep Conductor
collection: tableau
version: next
locale: en-us
portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/tableau/next/en-us/server/server_process_prep_conductor.md
canonical_url: https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/server_process_prep_conductor.htm
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description: Understand the Tableau Prep Conductor process that runs flows.
---
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# Tableau Prep Conductor

The Tableau Prep Conductor process runs flows and processes flows for ingestion by Data Catalog. It leverages the scheduling and tracking functionality of Tableau Server so you can automate running flows to update the flow output. Starting in 2020.4 Data Management is only needed to schedule flows to run on Tableau Server. For more information, see [Tableau Prep Conductor](https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/prep_publishserver_overview.htm).

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                            <td class="TableStyle-Basic-Border-BodyE-Column1-Body1"><strong>Process</strong>
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                                    Tableau Prep Conductor
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                            <td class="TableStyle-Basic-Border-BodyE-Column1-Body1"><strong>Status</strong>
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                            <td class="TableStyle-Basic-Border-BodyD-Column1-Body1">Status of the Tableau Prep Conductor process is visible on the Status Page. For more information, see <a href="https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/service_viewstatus.htm" class="xref">View Server Process Status</a></td>
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                            <td class="TableStyle-Basic-Border-BodyB-Column1-Body1"><strong>Logging</strong>
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                            <td class="TableStyle-Basic-Border-BodyA-Column1-Body1">Logs generated by the Tableau Prep Conductor process are located in <code><code>C:\ProgramData\Tableau\Tableau Server\data\tabsvc\logs\</code>flowprocessor</code>. For more information, see <a href="https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/logs_loc.htm" class="xref">Tableau Server Logs and Log File Locations</a></td>
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Tableau Prep Conductor uses the following components to run flows:

- **Backgrounder:** Tableau Prep Conductor uses the Backgrounder process to run flows. Backgrounder is single threaded, so each instance of the Backgrounder process on a node can run one flow at a time. By adding more Backgrounders to a node, you can increase the number of flows that can be run in parallel on that node. The Backgrounder processes can be up to half the number of the physical cores of that node.
- **Connectors:** Prep Conductor uses the supported Tableau Data connectors to connect to data. For a list of supported Connectors, see [Supported Connectors.](https://www.tableau.com/products/techspecs)
- **Data Engine:** Any changes to data or transformation steps in your flow that cannot be pushed to the underlying data source are processed using the Data Engine process. For example, SQL Server does not natively support regular expressions. When connecting to SQL Server, Tableau Prep lets you write regular expression calculations. Tableau Prep Conductor uses Data Engine to temporarily load the data and then perform the regular expression.

## Performance and Scale Recommendations

- **Isolate flows to a separate node:** Running Tableau Prep Conductor on a separate node will isolate flow workflows from other Tableau workloads. This is highly recommended since Prep flows are CPU and RAM intensive.
- **Manage flow schedules:** You can control flow execution by creating flow schedules. These schedules let you determine when flows run, how frequently they run, the priority of that schedule, and whether to run items in that schedule serially or in parallel.
- **Add resources:** When scaling your Tableau Prep Conductor environment, we recommend scaling up to an 8 physical cores box per node running as many as 4 backgrounders on each. As you need more resources, we recommend adding more nodes to your server environment.

You can monitor user activity and performance of flows using Administrative views. For more information, see [Monitor Flow Health and Performance](https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/prep_conductor_monitor_flow.htm).

## Topology and Configuration

By default, Tableau Prep Conductor is automatically enabled on a node where backgrounder is enabled. If the node role is set to exclude flows, then Tableau Prep Conductor is not installed on that node. For more information, see [Workload Management through Node Roles](https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/server_node_roles.htm).

It is recommended that you enable Tableau Prep Conductor on a dedicated node to run flows. For more information, see the following topics:

- For new Tableau Server installations, see [Step 1 (New Install): Install Tableau Server with Tableau Prep Conductor](https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/prep_conductor_new_install.htm).
- To enable Tableau Prep Conductor on an existing installation of Tableau Server, see [Step 1 (Existing Install): Enable Tableau Prep Conductor](https://help.tableau.com/v0.0/server/en-us/prep_conductor_add_to_existing_install.htm).