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StephenW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Alteryx and Tableau have had a strong partnership over the years, enabling our customers to experience the thrill of solving and see and understand data. We're excited to deepen this partnership through the integration of Tableau's new Hyper API into 2019.4: You.Vision.

 

We're thrilled to announce that, through the integration of the Hyper API with the Input Data tool, you can now read Tableau Hyper Data Extract (.hyper) files as an input data source from within Alteryx Designer! We've been tracking this request for a long time and were quick to act once Tableau enabled this functionality.

 

GIF Tableau Hyper API.gif

 

 

Use a .hyper file as your input data to prep, augment, aggregate, and analyze the data in a new way. Additionally, benefit from substantial performance improvements when outputting .hyper files for Tableau consumption. Go from creating eye-catching charts and graphs in Tableau to carrying out further analytics in Alteryx!

 

“A major customer request that drove the development of the Hyper API was the ability to read data from .hyper files in Alteryx. We’re excited to see how Alteryx has used the Hyper API, enabling our joint customers to use .hyper file data within Alteryx workflows. Ultimately, this tight integration between products gives our joint customers more flexibility to augment, transform, and model their data — enhancing their data pipeline strategy." — Jonas Eckhardt, Senior Product Manager for Hyper

 

We're pretty hyped about this and eager to hear what you think and how you incorporate this capability into your analytics journey with Alteryx.

 

Existing customers - experience 2019.4 for yourself by upgrading to our latest release. For additional detail on the other great features released in 2019.4, check out updated technical documentation. We also welcome YOU to be part of the next release by joining our beta program or by submitting your brilliant ideas right here on Community.

 

For those new to Alteryx and still exploring the platform, we’d love for you to take our latest build for a test drive. Download our free Alteryx Designer trial to start kicking the tires and see for yourself why hundreds of thousands of data scientists, analysts, and quants across the globe choose Alteryx.

Comments
ThizViz
11 - Bolide

Wow! This is huge!

TonyAdam
8 - Asteroid

This is a great feature! Will it also be possible to open Hyper files that have been published to Tableau Server?

StephenW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@TonyAdam 

 

Hyper files can't be accessed directly from Tableau Server and will need to be downloaded to your machine or a network location. This is a great idea please add it to the Alteryx Designer Ideas!

 

To automate this process you'd likely use the Tableau Server REST API (download data source example) and the Download tool. I've also published a Tableau Personal Access Token REST API Authentication tool to Gallery to assist with authentication (note this tool was built by me as a personal project and isn't supported/maintained by Alteryx).

TonyAdam
8 - Asteroid

@StephenW 

 

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I thought of something similar to the "Publish to Tableau Server" tool, which is also not part of the official tools but can be downloaded from the Gallery.

 

But unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a method in the Tableau REST API to directly download the Hyper file. The Download Data Source method returns a Tableau Packaged Data Source (.tdsx), which then would need to be converted to a Zip file to be able to navigate to the contained Hyper file. So it should be possible to pack all this into a macro but that is more than one level above my Alteryx skills 😮

 

I will post this to the Alteryx Designer Ideas.

StephenW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@TonyAdam 

 

Sounds like a great challenge that'll have a useful payoff.

 

giphy

rdalley
6 - Meteoroid

Can you elaborate on:

"Additionally, benefit from substantial performance improvements when outputting .hyper files for Tableau consumption."

 

Is the improvement with the hyper file creation processing time? If so, is it due to changes made by Alteryx or the Hyper API? Is it faster due to size reduction?

 

At TC19 the Hyper team had mentioned steady improvements in Hyper with each new release.  Which version of Hyper is used with Alteryx?

 

Regards, Rob

 

https://tc19.tableau.com/learn/sessions/performance-best-practices-hyper-extracts?_ga=2.133865998.18...

rdalley_0-1578932717212.png

StephenW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@rdalley Thanks for the question. The improvements are largely attributable to using the new API and the improved handling of string values.

StephenW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@TonyAdam 

 

Good news! As a personal project (i.e., not supported by Alteryx), I created the Tableau Data Source Downloader tool for Alteryx Designer that provides a way to programmatically download .hyper files from a Tableau Server. It's still a bit rough and has only been developed/tested against Tableau Online. In order to work with other Tableau Server versions, the API endpoints will need to be updated to match the Tableau Server version.

 

Tableau Data Source Downloader demo workflowTableau Data Source Downloader demo workflow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If anyone finds this useful and can expand it to support more Server versions please contribute to the Github repo

 

TonyAdam
8 - Asteroid

@StephenW 

 

Hi Stephen,

 

that looks really cool and very professional. I will take a look at it and test to be able to give feedback 🙂

 

Thank you for your efforts!

MRAgamir
5 - Atom

@StephenW 

 

Hi Stephen,

 

I appreciate your work on this! It's a great tool.

 

I was wondering if it is within the realm of the possible to add some pre-filter criteria or maybe column selection during this extract phase?

 

In my use-case, I need to extract a very small portion of a very large dataset published on a Tableau Server. There is a very significant performance hit for having to download the entire dataset, then again, to open it via a dynamic input tool before I can run a filter and a select on it. Given my specific situation, it is much faster for me to open my Tableau Desktop with a pre-built worksheet and a live link to the data, export the sheet to a file, and then feed that file directly into Alteryx for next steps.

 

I would greatly appreciate any ideas or suggestions you have.

 

Respectfully,

Mike

StephenW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Hi @MRAgamir 

 

Thanks! I'd welcome your contribution to any enhancements. The source code can be found at https://github.com/stephen-wagner/tableau-data-source-downloader.

reganreese
6 - Meteoroid

Hi @StephenW 

I love this tool (Conceptually, as I haven't been able to get it to work)

I'm only able to view some of the data sources on our tableau server, and not all of them. If I put anything into the site name field I get a Status 401 error (unauthorized)

Any chance you'd be able to help out? 

StephenW
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@reganreese 

 

When I developed the tool, I only had temporary access to a Tableau Online and was only able to test against it. In order for it to work with your organization's Tableau Server, you'll have to edit the source code to include the relevant API endpoints (there are URL differences between the different Server versions and Online).

reganreese
6 - Meteoroid

Thanks Stephen... I think that's going to be out of my depth.

Cool tool though!