Working with Tableau APIs: A Comprehensive Guide

There are numerous Business Intelligence tools that are available in the market today. One of the most well-known tools is Tableau which is used by almost all departments in a business including Product, Marketing, and even Finance. Along with the ability to create interactive visualizations, Tableau gives users the ability to change Tableau Server, Tableau Online site, and Prep Conductor resources programmatically, using Tableau APIs. The Tableau APIs houses functionality that gives users access to Data Sources, Workbooks, Projects, Users, Sites, etc.

This article will provide you with an in-depth understanding of the various operations that you can perform using Tableau APIs.

What is the Need for Tableau APIs?

Organizations that use Tableau for Business Analytics will at some point want to embed Tableau Reports and Dashboards into their internal Web Applications that the decision-makers will refer to make decisions. In other cases, they may want to automate repetitive tasks or integrate Tableau tasks into their existing workflows. 

Tableau APIs are the solution for achieving all such integrations. Tableau APIs are intended for developers to integrate Tableau functionality into their Web Applications or easily create third-party Client Applications. 

Prerequisites for using Tableau APIs

• Administrator access to Tableau Server or Online
• Basic understanding of Rest APIs.

Working with Tableau APIs

You will now look into some of the common tasks that can be accomplished using Tableau APIs. You will be using an open-source utility called CURL to make the requests. The Tableau APIs can be used to perform the following operations:

• Signing-in and Authenticating using Tableau APIs
• Creating a Project using Tableau APIs
• Listing the Projects on your Site
• Publishing a Workbook using Tableau APIs

1) Signing-in and Authenticating using Tableau APIs

• Step 1: The first step is to create an XML file with your credentials as shown below.

<tsRequest>
	<credentials name="user-name" password="password">
		<site contentUrl="my-site-name" />
	</credentials>
</tsRequest>

• Step 2: Execute the below request using CURL to sign in.

curl "https://your-server/api/3.4/auth/signin" -X POST -d "@signin.xml"

The response will be as below if you have succeeded.

<tsResponse xmlns="http://tableau.com/api"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://tableau.com/api
	http://tableau.com/api/ts- api-3.4.xsd">
		<credentials token="fDgkilu12345rdftyuSg|0CHx3E9Sird1werdtyu78Kz">
			<site id="bfdgsg" contentUrl=""/>
			<user id="cvfgtyuh-84c8-418e-9b33-43c0rtyghu8a"/>
		</credentials>
</tsResponse>

The important part here is the credentials token that needs to be saved for all further requests. From the next request onwards, this token must be passed with the attribute name as X-Tableau-Auth. 

2) Creating a Project using Tableau APIs

• Step 1: To create a project, you should first create an XML file with the project details as follows.

<tsRequest>
	<project
	  name="new-project-name"
	  description="This is a new project" />
</tsRequest>

• Step 2: You can then use CURL to create a project using a POST request. This is done as below.

curl "https://your-server/api/api-version/sites/site-id/projects" -X POST -H "X-Tableau-Auth:fDgkilu12345rdftyuSg|0CHx3E9Sird1werdtyu78Kz" -d "@create-project.xml"

The response will be as follows:

<tsResponse xmlns="http://tableau.com/api"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://tableau.com/api
  http://tableau.com/api/ts-api-3.4.xsd">
	<project id="124214-4141-sgdsgsg-41414"
	  name="your-project-name"
	  description="description for the project”
	  createdAt="2021-06-07T12:31:58Z"
	  updatedAt="2021-06-07T12:31:58Z"
	  contentPermissions="ManagedByOwner">
		<owner id="aafafa-fafaf-fafaf-1134"/>
		</project>
</tsResponse>

Ensure that the project ID from this response is noted for future use.

3) Listing the Projects on your Site

This requires you to have access to your site ID which is available in the success response received in the initial sign-in request. 

Form the URL as below and execute the following request using CURL. Ensure that the site ID part is replaced with your own site ID.

curl "https://your-server/api/3.4/sites/c7b3099d-9e6d-44f1-8e05-d58d7fa97d4d/projects" -X GET -H "X-Tableau-Auth:fDgkilu12345rdftyuSg|0CHx3E9Sird1werdtyu78Kz"

4) Publishing a Workbook using Tableau APIs

You will now learn how to publish a workbook through the API. In most organizations, this is a very common task that is usually automated based on approval flows. To achieve this, you will need the name of the workbook that has to be published.

• Step 1: Create an XML file with the name of the workbook as shown below. Save it as publish-wb.xml. 

<tsRequest>
	<workbook name="test_publish" showTabs="true" >
		<project id="124214-4141-sgdsgsg-41414"/>
	</workbook>
</tsRequest>

• Step 2: Execute the CURL request as below.

curl "https://your-serve/api/3.4/sites/site-id/workbooks" -X POST -H "X-Tableau-Auth:fDgkilu12345rdftyuSg|0CHx3E9Sird1werdtyu78Kz" -H "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;" -F "request_payload=@publish-wb.xml" -F "tableau_workbook=@MY_PUBLISHED_WORKBOOK.twbx"

What is Tableau?

Tableau is one of the most powerful and fastest-growing Data Visualization and Business Intelligence tools available in the market. It allows users to seamlessly transform raw data into a visual format that can be understood by anyone.

The various tiers offered by Tableau are as follows:

• Tableau Desktop
• Tableau Public
• Tableau Online
• Tableau Server
• Tableau Reader

Tableau is widely used as it allows users to analyze the required data seamlessly. Visualizations in Tableau are generated as Worksheets, Dashboards, and Stories. Users can create custom dashboards that provide actionable insights and help drive the business forward. When configured with the proper underlying hardware and operating systems, all products by Tableau always operate in virtualized environments. Tableau can be used to explore data with limitless visualizations.

What are the Key Features of Tableau?

Some of the key features of Tableau are as follows:

• Data Sources: Tableau offers seamless integration with a large number of widely used platforms for data storage such as File Systems like Microsoft Excel, CSV, etc., Relational Databases like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, etc., Cloud-based Systems such as Google BigQuery, Windows Azure, etc., or other sources such as ODBC/JDBC.
• Attractive Visualizations: Tableau gives users the ability to create different types of data visualizations. For example, users can easily create the simplest visualizations such as a Pie Chart or Bar Chart or some of the most complex visualizations such as Bullet Chart, Gantt Chart, Boxplot, etc. Tableau also comes with information on geographical data such as Countries, Cities, Postal Codes, etc. that allows users to build visualizations using informative maps.

• Wildcard Union and Cross-Data Join: Users have the ability to perform Cross-Data Join and Union in Tableau. This helps in removing the barriers and time-consuming workarounds that were required due to the massive use of numerous data sources.
• Cross-Data Source Filtering: For data with common dimensions, Tableau gives users the ability to perform the filter operation across multiple data sources at the same time. This also results in all necessary edits or changes being made to all worksheets with the same data sources using the same set of filters automatically.
• Mobile Dashboards: Tableau allows users to format all their Reports and Dashboards in such a manner that it is compatible with mobile devices as well. It lets users create custom mobile layouts for their Reports or Dashboard specific to their device.

Additional Resources on Tableau Api

• You can read little more Tableau Rest Api

Conclusion

This article provided you with a basic understanding of the various operations that be performed using Tableau APIs. Tableau provides a rich set of APIs that allows one to manage everything from user permissions and groups to workbook management. All the APIs follow the general pattern as the ones shown above. 

Tableau APIs is another aspect of what makes Tableau one of the most preferred Business Intelligence tools in the industry. Tableau’s intuitive visualizations and advanced analytical abilities allow even people without a technical background to make the most of their data. 

If at all, there is something that prevents an organization from getting the best out of Tableau, it is the lack of direct integration with some of the popular Cloud-based services. To solve that problem, businesses can use automated Data Integration platforms like Hevo.

Details on Hevo pricing can be found here. Give Hevo a try by signing up for the 14-day free trial today.