Prerequisites

Alation Cloud Service Applies to Alation Cloud Service instances of Alation

Customer Managed Applies to customer-managed instances of Alation

Before you install the Tableau OCF connector, ensure that you:

Enable Metadata API for Tableau Server

Refer to Enable metadata-services. Enabling Metadata API may take up to 48 hours depending on the volume of metadata.

Note

The Metadata API is enabled by default for Tableau Cloud.

Enable Sensitive Lineage Data Setting

In Tableau:

  1. Go to Site Settings > General > Sensitive Lineage Data.

  2. Make sure that Show complete lineage (default) is selected.

Note

If this option is not selected, some Tableau objects will not be extracted.

This setting is applicable for both Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud.

Required Information

Site ID

A site ID is the text after the #/site/ part of the URL of a Tableau page, in front of the next slash. In the example below Sales is the site ID:

https://prod-useast-a.online.tableau.com/#/site/Sales/explore

You can specify multiple site IDs separated with commas.

Note

Site ID is optional for Tabelau Server.

Tableau Server

The Tableau Server site ID information is used for authentication. You can provide a single valid site ID and the connector will discover all the other sites that the service account has access to. If the field is left empty, the connector will use the default site.

Tableau Cloud

For Tableau Cloud, Alation will only extract metadata from the sites with the IDs you have specified. If the field is left empty, the test connection will fail and no metadata will be extracted.

SSL Certificate

If connecting over SSL with custom SSL certificate, obtain the SSL certificate. It will need to be uploaded in the Tableau BI source settings in Alation. If you are connecting over SSL using CA authorised, certificate upload is not required.

Authentication

The Tableau OCF connector requires a service account with site administrator privileges. Authentication can be configured on the BI source Settings page. Make sure that the service is assigned with the followimg roles:

  • Server Administrator (applicable to Tableau Server only)

  • Site Administrator Creator

  • Site Administrator Explorer

The following authentication types are supported by Alation:

  • Basic authentication with a username and password

    Note

    Basic authentication is supported only on Tableau Server.

  • Personal access token

    • Each token can only be used for a single metadata extraction. If the token is used for multiple extractions in parallel, only the first extraction will work; for others an authentication error message will be displayed.

The Tableau OCF connector does not support SSO authentication to Tableau.

Note

For Tableau Cloud, if multi-factor authentication (MFA) is enabled, personal access token authentication is the only choice.

Authentication with Active Directory

Authentication with Active Directory is supported through basic authentication (username and password). Use the following format for the username when configuring the Tableau BI source settings in Alation:

  • For Username, use domain_name\ADusername, where ADusername stands for the Active Directory username.

  • For Password, use the Active Directory password of the Active Directory username.

Extracting User Permissions Information from Multiple Domains

When permissions mirroring is enabled for a Tableau BI data source, Alation can extract user permissions information from multiple domains. To make extraction from multiple domains possible, perform the following configuration in Tableau and Active Directory:

  • In Active Directory, make sure that the domains you will extract from have bi-directional trust with the AD server that has Tableau installed. Users must be able to log into the Tableau instance using the credentials from another AD server.

  • Ensure that the Active Directory groups are imported and set up in Tableau.