Pull Dashboard Image from Tableau Server

We are trying to automate a daily email that would pull in an image of the current Tableau Dashboard.

I understand there is the Tableau Subscription models, but we need to be able to provide other information in the email, that can only be done with Alteryx.

We are trying using both the Download tool, and the Image tool, as I know you can enter the Tableau URL ending in .png to open the web page as an image. We have had some success with images from Google, but have not had success with pulling images from our Tableau Server.

Has anyone here done this successfully?

Input

Reporting

Connectors

Tableau

Download

Accepted answers

Coxta45

@FFFool,

Tableau 10.2 has a new API version (2.5) which has the shiny new Query View Image endpoint that @BenMoss mentioned.

Having said that, if your Tableau server is 10.2, you could keep going with the workflow that I posted, and pass the workbook id to the Query Views for Workbook endpoint to get a specific view id - which you would pass to the Query View Image endpoint to download the image. The endpoint returns a "live", high resolution image of the view. Once you've gotten the view id(s) that you need, you'll be able to just make a single call to the Image endpoint with each run of the workflow.

All comments

BenMoss

I can only imagine the difference between this and google is the security on the Tableau server. We'll have to somehow figure out how too pass the login credentials into the download tool but I am not sure where to start with this.

I'll have a chat with some of my colleagues and see what we come up with.

Ben

FFFool

Thanks, Ben.

I do have the output from the run that was successful before when using a random internet image and fails on Tableau .png link. I've entered several variations of my credentials in the download tool, and I'm using the Text to Columns(Actually, rows) tool to parse out the DownloadHeaders.

What I've noticed is that I get HTTP/1.1 302 Found anywhere that Server: Tableau. I get HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized anywhere that Server: Apache, which is where our Tableau front-end is apparently hosted.

So, it sounds like there is some sort of permissions issue with the server itself rather than Tableau. Not sure how to remedy this. I am not the Tableau Admin. I'm not sure what other information is in these downloaded headers, so I'm hesitant to upload the output I have, but if a specific point of the data would help, let me know and I can post that.

EDIT: I am a Tableau Site Admin, but not a Server Admin.

Coxta45

@FFFool,

Your Tableau Server has a plethora of API endpoints that can be used to get information about your projects, workbooks, views, users, etc. One that may be particularly helpful for you is the Query Workbook Preview Image API.

Also, the Publish to Tableau Server tool has a nifty output option for requesting an authentication token that can help do some of the legwork for getting the images (or using any of the API endpoints, for that matter). I was able to get the images pretty quickly thereafter with the download tool. I've attached an example workflow that should do the trick once you configure the Publish to Tableau Server tool. It will return a list of the workbooks from a specific site so that you can get the workbook ids for the specific dashboard(s) that you'd like images for.

Workflow Preview..

Tool Flow

And with results...

Results Results

The images, at this point, should be ready to use in the reporting tools, etc. Bear in mind that these are preview images and likely won't retain quality at higher resolutions. You'll have to be the judge - I didn't view any of them enlarged.

The Publish to Tableau Server Tool should be configured like so...

Connection Output Output

This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but it's a quick and easy way to get some dashboard images into your Alteryx reports/emails automagically ;-)

p.s. You might try your URL .png method in the download tool with the auth header token from the Publish to Tableau Server tool - you never know, it might just work. If it does please let me know!

Cheers,

Taylor

Tableau_Preview_Images.yxmd

Coxta45

@FFFool, @BenMoss,

I forgot to mention, the only header needed to use Tableau's REST API is an authentication token. For example:

X-Tableau-Auth : 12ab34cd56ef78ab90cd12ef34ab56cd

The Publish to Tableau Server tool's 'request authentication token' option provides exactly that - which you can subsequently use in the Download tool...

Hope that helps

vinay4444

Hey thanks for the article this works nicely for "previewImage" but when i change that to image it does not work and i get a message the file is damaged ,corrupted and "HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found" error message it given out. Any idea what would be the reason.

JJJ

Hi,

I'm a new user of alteryx and I also am looking to pull dashboard image from Tableau Server. Could you post your workflow so I can get an idea of how to get started? I have read the below thread but am still not sure where to start.

BenMoss

Hi @JJJ,

If you check out @Coxta45's post from earlier in this thread (page 1) you will see he has attached the workflow and also given a overview of how it works.

Ben

emkiely1

as anyone done this recently with the upgrades to both Alteryx and Tableau

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