Use your data on a website
Put numbers from your datasets on a public page, keep them fresh without any load on your database, or embed a live report.
A website can show what your datasets say. There are two ways, and the difference matters when a lot of people are reading.
Numbers on the page
Add a data source in Settings, under Data from Halo Data: a dataset and the question to ask it. Then Figures, Strip, Bars and Table blocks can read from it. Choose the source and the column in the block's settings, and the page shows the answer as you work. Each source names its dataset, with a link to it in Halo Data, and says if something would stop it going public. Blocks read a source by a key made from its name, which the dialog shows: a second source called Visitors is read as visitors-2.
Publishing asks each source once and stores the answer with the release. Readers never reach your database, so a thousand readers or a million cost the same one query, and your website stays up if your database goes down. A block keeps what's written in it until there's an answer.
Publishing an answer makes it public, so you can only use datasets you can open, and it takes the permission to share publicly. A field hidden from you can't go on a website, and neither can Marketplace data: a package's terms may not allow its numbers to be published, so it can be read in Halo but not on a public page. A dataset in the Trash leaves its blocks on what's written in them.
If a source doesn't answer when it's asked, readers keep its last answer to the same question for up to a week, or two refreshes if those are further apart. After that its blocks show what's written in them until it answers again. Whoever made the website live is told when it starts, and again if its numbers grow too old to show.
Keeping them fresh
Under Settings, Keeping data fresh asks your sources again on a schedule, between publishes. It changes only the numbers, never your drafts, so a refresh can't publish something you haven't finished. It asks what's live, as often as what's live says: a new schedule starts with the next publish. A dataset whose extract refreshes, or that's changed, is asked again within a minute or so.
Each refresh runs every source once, against your database, as the person who last made the website live, by publishing it or going back to a release. If they couldn't publish those numbers themselves now, refreshing stops, they're told why, and readers keep the numbers they were last given. Numbers stopped refreshing in the website's settings and on the websites list says why:
they left, or can no longer publish websites, or can no longer open a dataset behind a source
a source reads a hidden field, or Marketplace data
a dataset behind a source is in the Trash, or was deleted for good
your organization doesn't have Halo Data now
Once that's put right, such as by restoring a dataset from the Trash, the next refresh starts them again by itself. Publishing again starts them too. In Halo Data, Settings, Schedules lists each website's refresh, when it runs next, and any that have stopped.
When a dataset changes
Changing who may see what in a dataset, with a row policy or by hiding a field, asks what to do with the websites showing its numbers, since they were asked under the rules before: keep them, or take them off. Taking them off leaves those blocks on what's written until the numbers are asked again under the new rules. Whoever made each website live is told either way. In Halo Data, a dataset's page links to the page of each website that reads it, and to websites that embed a report reading it.
A live report
A Halo report block embeds a report from Halo Data, with its filters working and its data live. Choose a published report, and Halo sets up the embed. Your organization's own websites may show its reports without being added to the report's list of sites. The link it makes names the website in the report's Share dialog, and turning it off there leaves the block blank.
The block says if its report is in the Trash, deleted, not published, or its link was turned off, keeps its address in view, and links to the report in Halo Data. A report a website's live release, or a release kept to go back to, still embeds can't be deleted for good from the Trash.
Unlike numbers on the page, each reader's visit asks for data, so choose this when people need to explore, not just read. Learn more in embedding reports.