Category: Tableau Online

TabPy Heroku Deployment with Authentication Enabled

Since Analytics Extensions for Tableau Online were announced (read Analytics Extensions are Available with Tableau Online! on this blog and https://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2021/1/developers-analytics-extensions-tableau-online on Developer Platform news) there were a lot of interest and questions from people who want to try the new feature. And in many cases those who want to investigate using Python or any other analytics extension don’t have it configured and running yet.

Previously TabPy repo on github (https://github.com/tableau/TabPy) provided Deploy to Heroku button which allows to deploy TabPy in just a few clicks. However, deployed new instance won’t have authentication configured. And having both authentication and SSL is a requirement for analytics extensions to be able for using by Tableau Online.

With the latest improvement now you can specify user name and password for the instance:

Now the instance requires credentials which can be configured for a connections as shown in Analytics Extensions are Available with Tableau Online! post.

Another approach described in TabPy + Heroku = Tableau Online post and is useful for when you need to create your own flavor of TabPy – not only you can specify multiple users, but also can configure any other parameters. This approach requires a bit more work but gives a lot of flexibility in configuring TabPy for you needs. And with your own modifications you can deploy your own version of TabPy on Heroku the same way just in a few clicks.

Analytics Extensions are Available with Tableau Online!

You requested it, we listened, it took some time to make it happen… and now you can use TabPy, Rserve or any other analytics extension with Tableau Online!

To be able to enable the feature you need to be a site admin. In a similar way how on-prem Tableau Server is configured (see Multiple Analytics Extensions Connections with Tableau Server 2020.2 for details) for Tableau Online go to Settings, Extensions, set checkbox Enable analytics extensions for site and click Create new connection link. In popup window specify connection type, host, port and credentials.

NOTE. Tableau Online requires analytics extension connection to use SSL and authentication. This link shows some authentication related posts – https://tabscifi.golovatyi.info/category/authentication/. And with this link you can find some additional information about SSL and certificates – https://tabscifi.golovatyi.info/category/security/.

After configuring the connection click Save in the dialog window and then Save on the page. That’s it – now you can publish and use workbooks with Python/R/you-name-it scripts in them…

Actually there are couple more things to consider:

  • Your analytics extensions instance should use a certificate that Tableau Online can trust. It means no self-signed certs or certs issued by your organization. Those should be certs signed by one of well known CAs (Certificate Authority), e.g. DigiCert.
  • It has to be an endpoint (host and port) that is reachable for Tableau Online via the internet. If the analytics extension you are planning to use can be reached outside of your organization network Tableau Online should be able to see it too.