airtable-labs/airtable-tableau-wdc

A Tableau Web Data Connector to import records from an Airtable base into Tableau

Airtable -> Tableau Web Data Connector

This Tableau Web Data Connector (WDC) uses the Airtable Metadata* and Base APIs to fetch a base's list of tables and fields (schema) as well as all records and make them available to Tableau for visualization.

📚 Looking to learn how to use this Tableau Web Data Connector with an Airtable base? Visit the support article with step-by-step instructions and screenshots. The rest of this README is geared toward a technical audience.

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Learn about how to use a WDC with Tableau Desktop here. The URL for this WDC, hosted on Github Pages, is:

https://airtable-labs.github.io/airtable-tableau-wdc

For additional information and notes, including a mapping of Airtable field types to Tableau column data types and roles you can expect to experience, visit the NOTES.md file in this repo

• As of November 15, 2022, any Airtable user can use the Metadata API using Personal Access Tokens. Read the announcement here and create a personal access token with access to your base(s) with data.records:read and schema.bases:read scopes.

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The software made available from this repository is not supported by Formagrid Inc (Airtable) or part of the Airtable Service. It is made available on an "as is" basis and provided without express or implied warranties of any kind.

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For local development and testing:

1. Clone this repository
2. Install Node dependencies (different from the external libraries loaded from index.html) by running npm install
3. Start a local HTTP server by running npm start
   • Using the URL provided in the output, use the URL in your Tableau client
4. (Optional) After making changes to index.js, run npm run lint:fix to run the standardjs code linter in "fix" mode to attempt to reformat and conform your changes to the standard rules.

Hosting this WDC

Github Pages is currently used to host this web data connector at the URL above. If you'd like to host this WDC yourself, Tableau has some recommendations here.

airtable-tableau-wdc's Issues

Airtable Checkbox fields are showing as "False" in Tableau when it should actually show "True"

Describe the bug
Airtable Checkbox fields are showing as False in Tableau when it should actually show True

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Have a base with a table with a checkbox field
2. Check one of the checkbox cells
3. See in Tableau that the value is False

Expected behavior
Tableau should show the value as True

Doesn't support many to many linked record relationships?

Hey,

It seems this data connector doesn't support many to many relationships. am I correct? It exports linked record fields with recid1, recid2, etc. and there is no way to match it against the record id in the linked record table.

If this is correct, is there a workaround?

Thanks

📚 Add documentation about Tableau Server

Tableau documents how to set up/allow Web Data Connectors in Tableau Server generally at https://help.tableau.com/current/server/en-us/datasource_wdc.htm .

The following shell commands have been used to allow-list the Airtable Tableau WDC in this repository

# allow extract refreshes for WDCs
tsm data-access web-data-connectors allow -r true 

# allow Airtable Labs WDC 
tsm data-access web-data-connectors add --name "Airtable Labs WDC" --url https://airtable-labs.github.io:443/airtable-tableau-wdc --secondary https://airtable-labs.github.io/airtable-tableau-wdc/.*,https://airtable.com/css/compiled/all.css,https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/*,https://connectors.tableau.com/*

# apply changes
tsm pending-changes apply

# confirm allow list
tsm data-access web-data-connectors list

Add documentation for Tableau Cloud

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The examples here don't show how to install a web connector with Tableau Cloud, the hosted product.

Describe the solution you'd like
I'd like, if nothing else, a yes or no answer to the question: Can WDC's and this repo be used with Tableau Cloud. If the answer is yes, it would be great to include an example showing how to use it.

Tableau Desktop/Public 2022.2 crashes when selecting a base from the dropdown

Describe the bug
Tableau Desktop/Public 2022.2 crashes when selecting a base from the dropdown

The crash only seems to occur when choosing a base from the dropdown. A workaround appears to be inputting the Airtable base ID manually

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to '...'
2. Click on '....'
3. Scroll down to '....'
4. See error

Expected behavior
The WDC (nor Tableau) should crash

Screenshots
N/A

Environment information

• OS: Mac OS Monterey 12.4 (21F79)
• Tableau Version: 2022.2 (Tableau Desktop & Public)

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.