Tableau Output Tool vs Publish to Tableau Tool

My company recently has upgraded to Alteryx 2022.1 and in that process I've become aware of the new "Tableau Output Tool". I downloaded it and although I haven't yet got it working it does beg the question - why should I convert to use the "Tableau Output Tool" instead of the current "Publish to Tableau Tool" ? Could someone post a comparison / contrast on pros and cons of these two competing tool?

I understand the "Tableau Output Tool" is written in Python and that "Publish to Tableau" is written as a macro using an old version of the Tableau API. From my point of view I don't actually care how it's built, I just care that my data set gets published ok. I'm looking for end user experience improvements in the new tool.

The "Tableau Output tool" looks like it will need some configuration of Security Certificates so I'm not seeing a good reason to switch. I want to keep an open mind though and would appreciate any ideas.

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Accepted answers

Scott_Kane

I have an update on my side which can close this thread I think. I should have mentioned before that I am both one of the Alteryx System administrators at my company and also a Tableau system administrator. We have a pool of a few dozen Alteryx users we support so we see all kinds of issues come in.

Loosely following the instructions in this post I got things working

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Connection-Errors-with-Python-based-Connector-Tools-when-running/ta-p/460217

It's beyond the beyond of outrageous in my mind to need to do this at all. I understand it's because the tool is written in Python but could they not code around this somehow? The old tool never needed certificates installed. Having been on countless support calls with Alteryx Data Analysts over the past few years I can tell you the vast majority of them would not be able to do this. We are lucky to have a strong desktop management team that can make it so they don't have to but not all companies have this.

Beyond the certificate problem I think the layout of the tool is very awkward. It's not intuitive you search for a data set on one tab (Data) and then put details on it in Options. The old tool had just one screen. Also the documentation of the tool is really lacking. It looks to me between all the posts on this and my own experience this tool needs some work. I'll switch because we have to but I hope there are future developments with this tool to improve the user experience.

All comments

Christine_Assaad

Hi @Scott_Kane

It's because Tableau moved to MFA (Multi Factor Authentication). Please check the below.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/How-is-Alteryx-affected-by-Tableau-s-decision-to-require-Multi/ta-p/896756

Hope that answers your question. Cheers!

Scott_Kane

I should have mentioned - our server is on premise. We don't use Tableau online right now. Is there any reason to use the Tableau Output tool in that case?

I assume "Publish to Tableau" will eventually stop being supported but I'm ok waiting until that happens. The Tableau Output tool looks pretty buggy right now from the posts about it

Christine_Assaad

Hi @Scott_Kane

You can find info on when Publish to Tableau will be deprecated below.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Public-Community-Gallery/Publish-to-Tableau-Server-Tool/ta-p/877895

To summarize, a new version of it was released to also support Personal Access Token (PAT) to authenticate but it will get deprecated from version 22.3 and will no longer be supported.

Have you tried to use the Tableau Output? If yes, what kind of issues did you have?

Cheers!

AdwaitTarudkar

Thanks, @Scott_Kane for sharing this bit of information.

I understand that the old tools work great but in my experience, once they are tagged deprecated it is better to switch to the new tool otherwise the automation set on the respective workflow started to through an error in our case (referring to salesforce input tool). It worked well for some days but eventually stopped.

I am not sure this would be the same case for "Publish to Tableau server".

Thanks for sharing again!

Scott_Kane

Loosely following the instructions in this post I got things working

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Connection-Errors-with-Python-based-Connector-Tools-when-running/ta-p/460217

Scott_Kane

It also occurred to me our certificates for our Tableau server are internally issued and expire yearly. That means I'll need to work with desktop support to update this certificate store in the tool yearly. This is a much worse experience than we had before

NicolasSz

Hi @Scott_Kane ,

On my side I'm keen to move on the new Tableau output tool as it will be supporting Alteryx DCM which is really better for security.

Thanks

PhaniV

absolutely agree to this! Not intuitive and lack clarity on reference documentation. The only reason i'm trying to move is due to the DCM and I cant find any good documentation regarding how its established for Tableau Output Tool.

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