In an earlier blog post I explained how it is possible to add more detail to the offline map tile cache. This is very useful when you have a server environment that is not connected to the internet (and therefore cannot fetch tiles from the online service). But the question then arises – how do you get all your workbooks to redirect to the offline cache no matter what tile service they were authored for?

Fortunately this is simple to achieve – the tile services are defined by TMS files which are found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Tableau\Tableau Server\8.2\vizqlserver\mapsources. There are three main files here:

• online.tms – the pre-8.2 map tiles provided by Urban Mapping
• tableau.tms – the new 8.2 map tiles hosted by Tableau Software
• offline.tms – used for fetching tiles from the local offline tile cache

To have all requests redirect simply replace the online.tms and tableau.tms files with copies of the offline.tms file (renaming the files to _old will also work). Now all three point to the same location – the offline tile cache. With some imagination you can see how this same technique could be used to redirect to any new map tile service – e.g. if you have a custom tile provider you are using just replace the standard TMS files with the one for your service.

Note that this modification will need to be redone after every upgrade as it won’t be carried forward.