Tableau Data Source Plugin for Grafana

Description

The Tableau DataSource Plugin is a Grafana backend datasource plugin that enables on-demand querying and visualization of Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud content and operational data inside Grafana panels.

Tableau is a leading business intelligence and analytics platform. The plugin connects to the Tableau REST API to retrieve site information, projects, workbooks, views, published data sources, users, groups, background jobs, and extract refresh tasks.

Features

• Query and visualize Tableau Server / Tableau Cloud data directly within Grafana
• Support for multiple data categories:
  • Site Info: Site metadata, storage quota, user quota, and usage counts
  • Projects: Project inventory with owner and content permissions
  • Workbooks: Published workbooks with owner, project, size, and tags
  • Views: Views across the site with optional usage hit counts
  • Data Sources: Published data sources with certification status and connection type
  • Users: Site users with role, authentication setting, and last login
  • Groups: Site groups with domain information
  • Jobs: Background job history with duration calculation
  • Extract Tasks: Scheduled extract refresh tasks with consecutive failure counts
• Filter expression support using Tableau REST API filter syntax
• Grafana time range picker integration — from is pushed to the Tableau API as a server-side filter, to is enforced as a post-filter in the backend
• Automatic pagination — all pages are fetched and merged transparently
• Built-in retry logic with exponential backoff for transient failures
• Personal Access Token (PAT) authentication with automatic session management and refresh

Compatibility

Component	Version / Detail
Grafana	>= 12.0.0
Tableau Server	v2019.3+
REST API	3.28
Authentication	Personal Access Token

Visuals

Onboarding

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Query Examples

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Added Dashboards

Installation

Requirements

• Grafana >= 12.0.0
• Tableau Server v2019.3+ or Tableau Cloud
• A Personal Access Token (PAT) with appropriate site permissions
• Network connectivity to the Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud endpoint

Obtain a Personal Access Token

1. Sign in to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud.
2. Navigate to My Account Settings → Personal Access Tokens.
3. Click Create new token, provide a name, and copy both the token name and the secret — the secret is shown only once.

Install the Plugin

Install the plugin from the Grafana Plugin Catalog or using the Grafana CLI:

grafana cli plugins install crestdata-tableau-datasource

After installation, restart the Grafana server for the plugin to be loaded.

Configure the Data Source

1. In Grafana, navigate to Connections > Data Sources > Add data source.
2. Search for Tableau and select it.
3. Fill in the required configuration fields:

Name	Type	Required	Description
Server Endpoint	String	Yes	The Tableau Server or Cloud URL (e.g., https://use-east-1.online.tableau.com)
Site Name	String	No	The site content URL; leave blank for the default site
Token Name	String	Yes	The Personal Access Token name
Token Secret	Secure String	Yes	The Personal Access Token secret (encrypted at rest)

1. Click Save & Test. The health check will sign in and verify connectivity, returning the Tableau Server version and REST API version on success.

Usage

Query Editor

Once the data source is configured, you can create panels using the query editor with the following parameters:

Parameter	Type	Options	Default	Description
Query Type	Dropdown	Site Info, Projects, Workbooks, Views, Data Sources, Users, Groups, Jobs, Extract Tasks	Site Info	Select the data category to query
Filter Expression	String	Tableau filter syntax (field:op:value, comma-separated)	—	Filter applied to Projects, Workbooks, Views, Data Sources, Users, and Jobs

Available Query Types

Site Info

Returns a single-row frame with site metadata: ID, name, content URL, admin mode, state, storage quota, user quota, number of users in use, storage in use, user usage percentage, and storage usage percentage.

Projects

Returns all projects on the site with ID, name, description, content permissions, owner ID, owner name, created at, and updated at. Supports filter expressions. The Grafana time range filters by updatedAt.

Workbooks

Returns published workbooks with ID, name, content URL, show tabs flag, size (MB), created at, updated at, encrypt extracts flag, project ID, project name, owner ID, owner name, and comma-separated tags. Supports filter expressions. The Grafana time range filters by updatedAt.

Views

Returns views across the site with ID, name, content URL, view URL name, workbook ID, workbook name, project ID, project name, owner ID, owner name, total view count, created at, and updated at. Supports filter expressions. The Grafana time range filters by updatedAt.

Data Sources

Returns published data sources with ID, name, content URL, connection type, certified flag, has extracts flag, size (MB), created at, updated at, project ID, project name, owner ID, owner name, and comma-separated tags. Supports filter expressions. The Grafana time range filters by updatedAt.

Users

Returns site users with ID, username, full name, email, site role, authentication setting, and last login. Supports filter expressions.

Groups

Returns site groups with ID, name, and domain name.

Jobs

Returns background job history with ID, status, job type, priority, finish code, created at, started at, ended at, and computed duration in minutes (nullable — null when start or end time is missing). Supports filter expressions. The Grafana time range filters by createdAt.

Extract Tasks

Returns scheduled extract refresh tasks with ID, task type, priority, consecutive failed count, schedule frequency, next run at, workbook ID, workbook name, data source ID, and data source name.

Filter Expressions

Filter expressions use Tableau REST API filter syntax: field:operator:value. Multiple filters are comma-separated. The input is automatically normalized on blur — leading/trailing commas are stripped and spaces around commas are removed.

Examples:

• name:eq:Sales — exact name match
• projectName:eq:Finance — filter by project name
• isCertified:eq:true — certified data sources only
• status:eq:Failed — failed jobs only

Filters are supported on: Projects, Workbooks, Views, Data Sources, Users, and Jobs.

Time Range

The Grafana time range picker is integrated for all query types that have a time field. The from bound is sent to the Tableau API as a server-side gte filter to minimize data transfer. The to bound is enforced as a post-filter in the backend after the data is received. This split approach is required because Tableau does not support two filters on the same field in a single request.

Resource	Time field used	from (API filter)	to (post-filter)
Projects	updatedAt	updatedAt:gte:	drop rows after to
Workbooks	updatedAt	updatedAt:gte:	drop rows after to
Views	updatedAt	updatedAt:gte:	drop rows after to
Data Sources	updatedAt	updatedAt:gte:	drop rows after to
Jobs	createdAt	createdAt:gte:	drop rows after to

Query types without a time field (Site Info, Users, Groups, Extract Tasks) are unaffected by the time range picker.

The default time range for the bundled dashboard is last 7 days, which covers a typical Tableau job and content activity window.

Error Handling and Retry Strategy

Retries are performed only for transient failures:

• HTTP 401 (session expired) — session is invalidated and a new one is obtained automatically
• HTTP 429 (rate limited)
• HTTP 5xx responses (500–599)

Max retry attempts: 3, with exponential backoff (base delay: 3 seconds).

Non-retryable: HTTP 400, 403, 404, and 405 errors are returned immediately.

Resources Reference

Resource	Description	Supports Filter	Supports Time Range
Site Info	Site metadata, storage and user quota, usage counts and percentages	No	No
Projects	Project inventory with owner and content permissions	Yes	Yes (updatedAt)
Workbooks	Published workbooks with owner, project, size, and tags	Yes	Yes (updatedAt)
Views	Views with optional usage hit counts	Yes	Yes (updatedAt)
Data Sources	Published data sources with certification and connection type	Yes	Yes (updatedAt)
Users	Site users with role, auth setting, and last login	Yes	No
Groups	Site groups with domain information	No	No
Jobs	Background job history with computed duration	Yes	Yes (createdAt)
Extract Tasks	Scheduled extract refresh tasks with failure counts and schedule details	No	No

Limitations and Recommendations

API Considerations:

• The plugin uses Tableau REST API version 3.28 internally; no user configuration is required
• Personal Access Tokens expire after 15 days of inactivity or when manually revoked; create a new token if authentication fails

Performance tips:

• Use filter expressions to reduce the volume of data returned for large sites
• Reduce dashboard refresh frequency if rate limit errors occur

Support

For issues, questions, or feature requests, please open an issue in this repository.

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features and known issues.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To get started with development:

cd crestdata-tableau-datasource

# Frontend
npm install
npm run dev        # development mode with watch
npm run build      # production build

# Backend
mage -v            # build backend binaries

# Tests
npm run test       # frontend tests (Jest)
npm run test:ci    # CI mode
go test ./...      # backend tests

# Linting
npm run lint
npm run lint:fix

# Local Grafana instance (Docker)
npm run server

# E2E tests (Playwright)
npm run e2e

Before submitting a pull request:

1. Run the linter and ensure all tests pass.
2. Validate the plugin using the Grafana Plugin Validator.
3. Ensure any changes to plugin.json are intentional — a Grafana server restart is required after such changes.

Authors and Acknowledgment

Developed by Crest Data.

License

This plugin is distributed under the Crest Data End User License Agreement (EULA). See the LICENSE file for details.

References

• Tableau Product Page
• Tableau REST API Reference
• Grafana Plugin Development