Data Source Sharing: Efficient Multitenant Data Management

Faith Akinyi Ouma
Bold BI
Published in
5 min readMay 22, 2023
Data Source Sharing: Efficient Multitenant Data Management

Being able to access, analyze, and visualize data from multiple sources is crucial for businesses to make informed decisions quickly. However, in a multitenant architecture, when different tenant clients work with same data, creating the same data sources in each tenant to connect with its dashboards is highly unproductive. Also, keeping each tenant in sync with changes to the data source is a tedious process. Bold BI provides a solution to this issue by enabling users to publish data sources across multiple tenants. With just a few simple steps, you can streamline your data management processes and enjoy a hassle-free experience when working with multiple tenants.

Why publishing data sources across multiple tenants is necessary

In an organization with a multitenant BI deployment and shared database model, each department has its own tenant and set of dashboards but is connected to the shared database. In this case, publishing data sources between multiple tenants is necessary to share data sources across tenants to avoid redundant work. It also enables users to share data sources securely and save time and effort. It also helps keep data up to date across all tenants, allowing users to make more informed decisions. This feature is very useful when multiple tenants need to collaborate and share data sources to achieve their goals.

How to publish a data source to other Bold BI sites

To publish a data source to one or more sites, click the Action icon in the data source grid and select Publish to publish the corresponding data source.

Data Source Listing Page
Data Source Listing Page

Bold BI allows you to publish the data source to internal and external sites.

Internal site

This option allows you to publish a data source to sites created in the same Bold BI server. You can share data sources securely with other teams within the organization, enabling collaboration across teams or departments, improving productivity and decision-making. Check out this documentation for the steps to publish a data source to internal sites.

External site

This option allows you to publish a data source to sites created in other Bold BI servers for secure collaboration with other companies, clients, or customers. This documentation explains how to publish data sources to external sites.

View the statuses of published data sources

You can view the statuses of published data sources on the Published Resources page. The published resources are listed in the grid and grouped by the data source by default.

View Published Data Source Statuses
View Published Data Source Statuses

View publishing information and history

You can also see the publishing information and publish history of a particular data source on the Published Resources page. To view the information, click the Action icon in the grid and select Info.

To view the publish history, click the Action icon in the grid and select Publish History.

View Published Data Source Information
View Published Data Source Information
Published Data Source Information Example for Internal Site
Published Data Source Information Example for Internal Site
Published Data Source Information Example for External Site
Published Data Source Information Example for External Site

To view the publish history, click the Action icon in the grid and select Publish History.

View Published Data Source History
View Published Data Source History
Publish History
Publish History

How to synchronize new updates to the published data sources in other sites

When you make changes in an original data source, you can push those changes to the published site using the Synchronize option for a published resource. You can select the option next to the published resource name or from the published resource Action menu.

Synchronize Changes to Published Site
Synchronize Changes to Published Site

A confirmation dialog will appear. Click Yes to synchronize the data source.

Synchronize Published Data Source
Synchronize Published Data Source

You will receive the notification highlighted in the following screenshot.

Synchronized Notification

Synchronizing a resource allows connected, published sites to keep up with any changes made to the original data source without having to manually update the published sites every time a change is made to the original data source. With this feature, you can ensure that all of your clients or team members have access to the latest up-to-date and accurate information.

If you want to change the connection string of your data source in a designated tenant, you can do so in Bold BI if the lock data source editing option is not enabled.

If you have enabled the lock data source editing option and published the data source in another site, and you want to modify the connection string, you can do it through the custom attribute feature. Custom attributes help you avoid overriding the connection details whenever you sync the data source. Refer to this documentation for more information on how to use this feature.

If you want to remove the published data source from the list, just click Action in the grid, select Remove, and then click Yes in the confirmation dialog.

Remove Published Data Source
Remove Published Data Source
Remove Published Data Source
Remove Published Data Source

Also, you can publish dashboards between multiple tenants in Bold BI. Read this documentation for more information.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to streamline your data management processes and boost productivity with the Bold BI data source publishing feature. Start leveraging it today and witness its transformative impact on your organization’s BI strategy.

Originally published at https://www.boldbi.com on May 22, 2023.

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Faith Akinyi Ouma
Bold BI
Editor for

Technical assistance with 2 years of experience @sycfusion in Technical writing.