Tableau Output Tool 1.4.1 Error (cannot serialize None (type NoneType)

[wcharles]

Hello - I am looking for some assistance to see if anyone has had any luck with the new Tableau Output tool (1.4.1) for designer 2024.1.

We are receiving the following error "cannot serialize None (type NoneType)".

Previously we were utilizing the "Block until done" tool before the output and that solved the issue previously. 

After upgrading that is no longer the case. 

I have deleted out old file packages and reinstalled the newest version as well.

Has anyone else resolved this issue?

[lraucoules]

I am facing this issue as well. Seems like there are plenty of bugs associated with this tool.

[Audichrisrochelle]

I have been on a tear trying to understand or RCA this item, and I think I found what is generating this issue for most users. To summarize this is not an issue with Alteryx or the Tool, rather its an issue with Tableau server; how much deeper it goes from what I have been able to replicate I am not sure, but this is what I can validate so far.

On the Tableau server, project folders "should" have a non-null entry for [parent_project_id]; if this is null it indicates that project is a top-level project. I previously noticed on our server (2023.3) we have some projects (about ~60) who's parent is null, but within the site have parent directories. 

Either way I noticed that any project that has a value for parent id, I have no issues writing a data source with the tableau output tool. Any project I try to use that does not have a parent ID will fail with our favorite error "Error: Tableau Output (2): cannot serialize None (type NoneType)"

How do I tell if the parent id is null? If you look in your tableau server posgres DB, and go to the projects table you can inspect the records. Also if you utilize the Alteryx Tableau output tool you should see in the project list directories that exist and have no parent project on the right hand side of the list (see supplemental images).

I might be crazy and have tested lots of different scenarios, but this is the most repeatable way to generate this error with the Tableau output tool. Like I said earlier I am not sure if this is the genuine root of the issue but a solid indicator that your write will not work. Would love if someone could validate this on their Tableau server instance.
 

Edit* Adding context images and links
Tableau schema 
Data Schools diag 

[wcharles]

I spent some time testing this out today and I received mixed results. In some instances where the parent ID was null I actually was able to write my data source onto the server. The opposite was true in this situation as well for certain folders. So I guess maybe we will test it out on a few folders that are working and see what results we might be able to produce, but at this point my team is pivoting away from this tool until a stable release is available.

Thanks for all the info and links though this was very helpful in testing. 

[Audichrisrochelle]

were they top level domains?

At this point my team and I agree its best to just find the folders we can write into and drop our data sources into there. Our backup is to write it into our DB, then pull it with prep into tableau; not the way I want to do it either.

[wcharles]

Yes they were.

Also this morning I downloaded the newest tool 1.4.2 and tested it on some of our workflows and I am seeing the same issues still unfortunately. 

Not sure if you have given this one a shot but doesn't look favorable. 

[GeorgePr]

Yep,

same issues. Cannot find the breaking point.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Discussions/Tableau-Output-new-folder-issu...

[Audichrisrochelle]

Yeah, I take back my old post; we looked into it further, null parent ID's didn't seem to matter. At this point we are just seeing consistency with which project folders we can write to, and which ones we cannot. Tableau told us there was a bug where "/" characters will cause issues with project directories, we saw it consistently causing a null parent ID, but it did not impact if we could write to a directory or not.

Honestly i'm lost at this point, and it sucks this tool isn't open source, or can provide deeper error logging. Our current mitigation is a single project folder for all of our data sources, or I am writing a python tool to output to Tableau server. I plan on opening a ticket to Alteryx support, but I don't think they cannot be unaware of the issue at this point.

[Audichrisrochelle]

I went to open a support ticket and was greeted with this KB before I submitted...

https://knowledge.alteryx.com/index/s/article/Tableau-Output-Error---Cannot-Serialize-None-type-NonT...

I guess they are working on it as part of GCSE-2348.

Reviewing the causes, the first cause does not apply to my issue, the URL strings we have are way less than 1024 char. The second example is a little illegible to me "this appears to be a bug caused by how the Site Name when blank is passed to connect to Tableau Server" Where is the site name inserted blank? the project, the tableau tool connection pane, the tableau tool running? Either way I am not sure this is the cause for my issue either, since we can connect to the server and can click run on certain projects with success.

[rreinha3]

When I try to publish only selecting the "Select Data Source" and skipping over the "Select Project" section I get this error.  But if I first use "Select Project" and choose the folder then select the same data source under "Select Data Source" I don't get the error.  Perhaps you may find luck if you make sure to select a folder in "Select Project" first.