Scheduled Data Refresh & Caching

User Problem

Users building data-driven applications in Plotly Studio currently have no way to trigger data updates, relying on hacky workarounds and re-publishing apps manually. This can lead to apps displaying stale data, requiring constant manual intervention, and hindering the ability to present timely and accurate insights to viewers.

What is it?

This is a new capability within Plotly Studio that introduces Scheduled Data Refreshes and Caching Rules for applications. It provides a robust, back-end mechanism to define how and when the underlying data extracts for an app are updated.

What Does it Allow Users to Do?

This feature allows users to:

• Automate Data Updates: Users can define a specific, recurring schedule for their application's data extracts to be pulled and refreshed automatically. This ensures their apps consistently display the most up-to-date information without manual effort.

• Customize Refresh Frequency: Users can set the refresh interval using through the Data Sources chat with natural language. This will be interpreted and applied as a crontab expression used in the @schedule decorator in the data source code.

• Set Caching Rules: Users can choose from distinct data refresh/caching behaviors to optimize performance and data freshness:

  • Never: The data remains static.

  • On-demand: The data refreshes every time the application is loaded.

  • Scheduled: The data refreshes based on the user-defined frequency.