Publish to Tableau Server 2018.3 from Alteryx 11.5

[Plight]

Hi All

Grateful if anyone can share their experiences or advice about publishing to Tableau Server 2018.3 from Alteryx 11.5.

My client works in an enterprise environment where we are restricted to using Alteryx 11.5 (we are on 11.5.1.35081 with scheduler plug in). Our Tableau Server is version 2018.3. We publish TDEs without issue using version v1.08.1 of the Publish to Tableau Server Tool, but we'd love to take advantage of Hyper extracts and packaged metadata.

The latest versions of the Publish to Tableau Server Tool provides this capability, relying on the ability of Alteryx 2018.1 to output data as a Hyper extract and I presume the ability of Alteryx version 2018.2 to output as a TDS. As we're stuck with 11.5 for the medium-term, I'm on the hunt for alternative options.

Alteryx Support were unable to provide a workaround for this issue and suggested I reach out to the community. I was unable to find an existing community thread addressing this specific question, so have started this one. The metadata for datasources is a greater priority for us than the hyper extracts.

Best

Henry

[cmcclellan]

So you've got the latest version of Tableau Server, but stuck on an old version of Alteryx ? ... that doesn't really make sense, but as far as I know you will need to upgrade Alteryx to create hyper files because 11.5 just won't.

[BenMoss · Accepted solution]

Well the output functionality in the latest version is exposing the extract API from Tableau...

https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/api/extract_api/en-us/Extract/extract_api.htm

In theory you could build your own tool, but I think the development effort is going to be to significant.

I would advise you start creating a business case for upgrading and put this functionality high on the agenda, alongside features such as caching and python integration.

Ben

[cmcclellan]

The API would definitely work, just some python code and making sure the setup is right.

I think the advantages of upgrading Alteryx would be better though - there's always lots of new features and they will probably be creating multi-table extracts soon

[Plight]

Thank you both for your advice. Using the extract API presents as a viable solution if we were to make that time investment. 

Cheers

Henry