Explore in Tableau API Overview


The Explore in Tableau API allows Tableau partners to provide seamless, integrated experiences between their platforms or applications and their customer’s Tableau Cloud site. The API accepts an externally-defined data source and returns a URL for users to initiate a web authoring session. Leveraging this API, partners can help users reduce time to value by streamlining the experience of analyzing their data.

For example: You’re a cloud data provider, and your customers want to streamline their ability to analyze their data in Tableau. You can use the Explore in Tableau API to create a button in your database application that launches Tableau-powered analytics for objects in the customer’s data catalog.

The Explore in Tableau API is only available to Tableau partners, and is currently only available in Tableau Cloud. If you’re a partner who is interested in starting the on-boarding process for this feature, talk to your partner manager. For more information on becoming a Tableau partner, see Tableau Partners.

Once you have arranged access to the Explore in Tableau API with your partner manager, you will receive an API key, a data provider string, and a rate limit threshold. Knowing the rate limit threshold is not required to use the API, but you should be aware of rate limitations for accurate troubleshooting.

Overview

The Explore in Tableau API is a single REST API method that accepts a base64 URL encoded Tableau Data Source (TDS) file in the request body. It returns a Tableau Cloud web authoring URL. Authorization is accomplished using an API key and a JSON Web Token (JWT). No customer data or content is transmitted during the API conversation except for TDS metadata (table and column names, etc.). Furthermore, the partner doesn’t need to know or have control of Tableau Cloud site or authorization information.

An end-to-end transaction using the Explore in Tableau API is diagrammed below.

Explore in Tableau process transaction diagram

  1. The client triggers the data provider app (via click, for example) to explore data in Tableau.
  2. The data provider calls the Explore in Tableau API, uploading a custom TDS.
  3. The API responds to the data provider with a URL.
  4. The data provider directs the client to the URL.
  5. The client launches a web authoring session using the TDS uploaded by the data provider.

Prerequisites