Create External Report from Tableau
This article will show you how to create an External Report that displays data from your Tableau server.
PREREQUISITES:
If your External Report Viewer is displaying duplicate Filters based on your BI Tool defaults, your Admin can reset the default behavior to remove the Metric Insights filters from Viewer display. Refer to How to Omit Filters from External Reports.
- NOTE: If there is no Tableau Report Type in the list, you can create one by following instructions in this article: Create a New External Report Type
- You can customize Tableau toolbar and tabs display under the Advanced tab (this will pass these parameter settings to URLs) instead of editing External Report Type.
Leave Viewer URL append and External URL append fields blank and customize External Reports the way your organization requires (see the screen below).
1. Create New External Report
Access New >External Report > Tableau
- Provide a descriptive phrase in Name
- Specify Category where External Report will be placed
- Define whether content has to be updated manually or automatically
- For "Automatically Collected", specify Report Image Trigger
- Choose Tableau Plugin Connection Profile
- Select Tableau worksheet (Object) for External Report
- NOTE: Tableau Plugin does not collect Objects from Personal Spaces.
- [Next: define details]
2. Specify Report Details
-
Show Report in defaults to "External Webpage". For "Viewer", select to show the External Report:
- "In iframe": to embed the Report into Metric Insights
- "As static image": to show an image of the Report in Metric Insights. NOTE: For this option, make sure you Collect Image before going to Viewer.
- "As PDF": to show a PDF version of the Report in PDF viewer in Metric Insights. Tableau Plugin supports getting native PDFs. NOTE: To display this option in the Editor, enable Collect additional files > PDF on the Advanced tab.
- Optionally, configure filtering via [Manage Filters]
- Optionally, [Edit URL] to modify the URL by appending a question mark (?) followed by any filter or parameter settings
- Optionally, [Test URL] to test how your Report will be displayed on External Webpage or in Viewer, depending on the display option selected in the previous step
- Select Report Image option:
- "Always collect all instances of external report": collect all images and cache them on a schedule
- "On Demand: only when needed for distribution": individual images are only collected when they need to be included in an email
3. Collect Image and Publish
Tableau Plugin collects images and PDFs by communicating with the tool via API. Web API is used by Tableau Plugin by default. Getting images and PDFs for Workbooks is always performed via REST API.
- [Collect Image]
- [Enable & Publish] to proceed to Viewer
NOTE:
For BigQuery internal data sources:
- If a data source is published, Tableau uses token from this Data Source for all connections.
- If a data source is not published, Tableau requests token for each user who opens Workbook. A user would need to access Workbook from a service account and log in to BigQuery.