Tableau Desktop and Web Authoring Help

This topic describes how to connect Tableau to Oracle Eloqua data and set up the data source. It also describes how date range selections can impact performance.

Note: Tableau is working on a replacement connector. After it's complete, it will be added to this page.

Warning: The Oracle Eloqua connector is deprecated as of the 2023.1 release. You can use the connector until it’s been retired. Once the Connector is retired, it’s removed from the Tableau user interface and any data sources using the connector will no longer work as expected. The deprecated connector will be retired 1-2 releases after the replacement connector is made available.

Note: For the most up-do-date information on this connector, see the Oracle Eloqua help topic for the current version of Tableau.

Before you begin

Before you begin, gather and confirm this information for connecting:

• You must be a member of the following Eloqua security groups:

  • Advanced Users - Marketing

  • API Users

• Company Name

• Username

• Password

Make the connection and set up the data source

1. Start Tableau and under Connect, select Oracle Eloqua. For a complete list of data connections, select More under To a Server. Then do the following:

   1. Enter Company Name, Username, and Password, and then select Sign In.

   2. Select Filter Type: Relative date range or Fixed date range, and then select or specify the range.

   3. Select Connect.

      If Tableau can't make the connection, verify that your credentials are correct. If you still can't connect, your computer is having trouble locating the server. Contact your network or Eloqua administrator.

      After your credentials are verified, the Eloqua connector will only prompt you to authenticate when necessary. The Sign Out option will start the authentication process again.

      

2. On the data source page, do the following:

   1. (Optional) Select the default data source name at the top of the page, and then enter a unique data source name for use in Tableau. For example, use a data source naming convention that helps other users of the data source figure out which data source to connect to.

   2. Under Table, select a table and drag it to the top of the canvas.

   3. Select the sheet tab to start your analysis.

      After you select the sheet tab, Tableau imports the data by creating an extract. Note that Tableau Desktop supports only extracts for Eloqua. You can update the data by refreshing the extract. For more information, see Extract Your Data.

      Creating extracts may take some time depending on the amount of data that is included.

Use Accelerators

You can use an Accelerator to quickly build informative dashboard designs made specifically for key business metrics on Tableau Desktop and Tableau Cloud. For more information, see Use Accelerators to Quickly Visualize Data.

Date range selections can impact performance

It’s tempting to gather as much data as possible when you do an analysis, however, retrieving records from Eloqua can be time-consuming. Tableau doesn’t know how much data there is in a particular date range until it retrieves the data. For this reason, you should restrict your date range at first, and then expand after you evaluate performance. You can modify the date range on the Data Source page. Under Connections, select the drop-down arrow for the connection and select Edit connection.

To give you a rough idea of how much time it might take to retrieve data from Eloqua, tests were conducted using a high-speed connection. This table shows how long it took in the test environment to retrieve a given number of records. The connector retrieves 1000 records per request.

Number of records	Time to retrieve
50,662 records	3 minutes 17 seconds
95,214 rows	6 minutes 14 seconds
194,679 rows	12 minutes 55 seconds

Eloqua limits

Field limits

Some Eloqua tables can be customized to have more than 250 fields. Tableau currently retrieves the first 250 fields and ignores the rest. When you select an Events, Custom Objects, Contracts, or Accounts table, Tableau will display a warning if there are more fields than Tableau can retrieve.

Daily table request limits

Each table requested by Tableau counts against a daily Eloqua request limit of 2000. When the limit is exceeded, Eloqua operations might choose to disable Tableau, in which case, they will contact the account owners. You can monitor your daily usage in Eloqua using the Eloqua Marketing Operations Center.

Incremental Refresh

For all the activity labels (with the exception of "Activities- all"), you can now implement incremental refreshes. For more information, please see Refresh Extracts(Link opens in a new window).

See also

• Set Up Data Sources – Add more data to this data source or prepare your data before you analyze it.
• Build Charts and Analyze Data – Begin your data analysis.