Tableau Online Connector

1. Introduction 

Tableau Online is the analytics platform fully hosted in the cloud which publishes the dashboards and shares your discoveries with anyone. Here the users can Invite colleagues or customers to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data which are easily accessible from a browser or with mobile apps.

OvalEdge Crawling: It is a process of collecting information about data from various data sources like on-premise, cloud databases, Hadoop, visualization software, and file systems. When an OvalEdge crawler connects to a data source, it collects and catalogs all the data elements (i.e. metadata) and stores it in the OvalEdge data repository. Here the crawler creates an index for every stored data element, which can later be used in data exploration within the OvalEdge Data catalog which is a smart search. The OvalEdge crawlers can be scheduled to scan the databases regularly, so they always have an up-to-date index of the data element.

Data Sources: The Data Sources are the ones where the OvalEdge crawler integrates with various data sources to help the users to extract metadata and build a data catalog. This document provides information about how to make a connection to your Tableau instance and crawl the reports and tiles built from various workspaces.

Connect to the Data: Before crawling and building a, you must first connect to your data. OvalEdge requires users to configure a separate connection for each type of data source. The users must enter the source credentials and database information for each type of connectivity. Once a data connection is made, a simple click of the Crawl button starts the crawling process.

Connector Capabilities

The connectivity to the Tableau Connector is performed via the API Client. 

Technical Specifications

Feature	Supported Objects	Remarks
Crawling	Report Group, Reports	It fetches all Report Groups and Reports from Tableau Server.
Lineage Building	Report Group, Reports/ Workbooks, Data Sources	It can build the lineage using the Report from Tableau server.

Connection Details

To connect to the Tableau database using the OvalEdge application, complete the following steps.

1. Login to the OvalEdge application
2. In the left menu, click on the Administration module name, the sub-modules associated with the Administration are displayed.
3. Click on the Crawler sub-module name, the Crawler Information page is displayed.
4. In the Crawler Information page, click on the +AddNewConnector icon. The Manage Connection with Search Connector pop-up window is displayed.
5. In the Manage Connection pop-up window, select the connection type as Tableau. The Manage Connection with Tableau-specific details pop-up window is displayed.
   
6. The following are the field attributes required for the connection of Tableau
   

   Configuration	Mandatory/Optional	Description
   Connection Type	Mandatory	By default, the selected connection type is displayed as Tableau.
   License Type	Auto Lineage	Auto lineage
   License Type	Mandatory	Select the license type as Standard/Auto Lineage.
   Connection Name	Mandatory	Enter the name of the connection, the connection name specified in the Connection Name textbox will be a reference to the Tableau server connection in the OvalEdge application. Example: Tableau Connection1
   Tableau Content URL	Optional	Reference document: https://help.tableau.com/current/api/rest_api/en-us/REST/rest_api_concepts_auth.htm
   Trusted to Host(Y/N)	Optional	Y to enable host IP as the trusted connection. N to disable host IP as the trusted connection.
   Username	Mandatory	Username for Tableau Server account
   Password	Mandatory	Password for Tableau Server account
   Tableau API Version	Optional	The Tableau versions supported by OvalEdge are 2.8, 3.0, 3.1. Default value REST API for Tableau server 10.5 REST API for Tableau server 2018.1.6
   OvalEdge Server	Optional	Keep it blank
   Connection string	Mandatory	It will be displayed by-default.
   Default Governance Roles	Mandatory	From the dropdown list, select Stewards, Custodian, and Owner.
   No of archive objects	Mandatory	By default, the number of archive objects is set in the disable mode. To enable the archive option click on the Archive toggle button and enter the number of objects to be archived.
   Select Bridge	Optional	Select option NO Bridge if no bridge is available for connector

   Tableau Online - For this type of connection we need to provide Token based Authentication as ’’Y’’
7. Once after entering the connection details in the required fields, click on the validate button the entered connection details are validated the Save and Save & Configure buttons are enabled.
8. Click on the save button to establish the connection or the user can also directly click on the save & configure button to establish the connection and configure the connection settings. Here when you click on the Save & Configure button, the Connection Settings pop-up window is displayed. Where you can configure the connection settings for the selected Connector.
   
   

Permissions

The minimum requirement to access the Tableau Server is to be the site administrators or site role of Explorer.

Error Validations

The following are the possible error messages encountered during the validation.

Error Messages	Description
Signing Error- Error signing in to Tableau Server	In case of an Invalid Username/ Password
Can't login, Tableau version: is not support	In case of an incorrect Api version
Error while getting sites	In case the user doesn't have proper permissions to get the sites.
Error while retrieving Workbooks of Tableau	In case the user doesn't have proper permissions to get workbooks.

Generating Token-Based Authentication

Tableau SSO Authentication: The Tableau server is enabled with SSO or SAML integration, Rest API will not support it. Instead of that, we need to generate PAT (Personal Access Token) for that user.

The following are the steps to generate PAT (Personal Access Token):

1. Login to Tableau Online Server and navigate to the My Account Settings.
   
   
2. In the My Account Settings page, click on the Settings tab and enter the Token Name in the Personal Access Tokens field.
3. Once after providing the Token Name the Create new token button gets enabled and click on the Create new token button, a pop-up window with the secret token is displayed.
   
4. Click on the Copy to clipboard button and navigate to the OvalEdge application Tableau Manage Connection page and provide the password and select Is Token Based Auth(Y/N) option as ‘Y’.

Troubleshooting Tableau Authentication

In case, if the authentication fails, we can troubleshoot Authentication using curl from the VM.

<tsRequest>

  <credentials personalAccessTokenName="kavyagv" personalAccessTokenSecret="X3d/mUyURfomNvNcQ==:EKqhHRq9qfYe4Otn3DlNkMtJI" >

<site contentUrl="ovaledgetestonline" />

  </credentials>

</tsRequest>

Save the above Request to an XML file, say signin.xml.

Now, run the below curl command. With this, we can change the request and try different scenarios, instead of going for a new build with changes or additional logs.

curl https://prod-apnortheast-a.online.tableau.com/api/3.9/auth/signin -X POST -d @signin.xml

Similar Requests can be executed for other Tableau operations as well.

The difference between Tableau On-Premises and Online server Connection:

1. Tableau On-Premises  - For this type of connection, we need to provide Token based Authentication as ‘’’N’’
2. Tableau Online  - For this type of connection, we need to provide Token based Authentication as ’’Y’’

Connection Settings

Crawler

Crawler setting has various settings tabs for crawling and profiling options. The crawler options are available for all the connections. Based on the selected connection the options will differ. It is required to enable one of the crawler options.

Crawler options

Reports: The crawling will discover all the reports and bring them into OvalEdge. Restricted Time Zone: In the Crawler Settings page, you can select the Scheduling Time Zone check box for crawling the selected report database at the scheduled time zone. Once the Scheduling Time Zone checkbox is selected, you cannot succeed in crawling the selected report database connection in the given UTC time zone. The failed crawling details are displayed in the Job Logs. In the Configuration page - Others tab, you can set the UTC time zone and enter the start and end times. Now, during this time setting, the user cannot crawl the report connection. Delta Crawl: This crawling will get report / report columns only when the remote report is changed (i.e., we will compare remote date with local date). If Delta crawl option is, ○ Enabled - It–will crawl as Delta crawl ○ Disabled - It–will crawl as full crawl. Note: In full crawl, we will get all reports/report columns present in the remote data irrespective of any changes in the remote.

Crawler Rules

When setting up the regex rules the user will be able to write rules that will either include and/or exclude schema, tables, views, columns, procedures, and functions that start with, end with, or have middle characters as defined in the rule.

Access Instruction

It allows the Crawler admin to write the specific instructions on the data source/connector.

 

Other

When you navigate to the Others tab, the Send Metadata Changes Notifications, and Context URL sections are displayed.

Send Metadata Notification to

1. Select whether the notifications for the Data Owner and Data Steward under the specific Roles need to be sent or not.
2. Select the desired role from the Roles dropdown menu and click on the Save Changes button. The notifications will be successfully sent to select Data Owner and Data Steward. 

Context URL

The OvalEdge Browser Extension supports the Context URL functionality. The Context Id helps users to catalog reports from source reports database. When the Context Id is entered for  a specific Report Connector Type > Crawler settings, the OvalEdge application plugin acts as a bridge between the OvalEdge application and Source Report Database to view Certification status or Endorsement Rating applied to the Report using the OvalEdge application.

Crawling a Database Connection

In OvalEdge, each data source can be crawled at a Schema level. In other words, when there are multiple schemas within a database, you have an option to select a specific schema and crawl. Here Tableau reports can be crawled at the workspace level.

To crawl a specific Schema or multiple schemas:

1. Login to the OvalEdge application.
2. Navigate to the Administration module and select the Crawler submodule. The Crawler Information page is displayed.
3. In the Crawler Information page select a connection that was created (Tableau) and click on the  Crawl/Profile button. The pop-up window for selecting the Schema is displayed.
   
4. Select the checkbox next to the Schema Name and select the Crawl option. If you want to select all the Schemas click on the checkbox at the Schema header name. 
5. Once after selecting the Schemas, click on the Run button to initiate Crawling the database connection immediately. Alternatively, select the job workflow to schedule a  Crawl action later.  
6. Once the crawl job is initiated a success message is displayed.