Create more functionality in Tableau Server with Rest API

Tableau Server REST API Doc: https://help.tableau.com/current/api/rest_api/en-us/REST/rest_api_ref.htm

Here are some of the usage that I put to use:

• Download Workbooks for Git Revision
• Create Groups, Projects and Set Permission for each group for the Project + Create Sub-projects with Inherited Permission from Projects

These are what I created as they get used in the above cases on the side:

• Query excisting groups
• Delete a group or multiple groups

Before Running Files

Create python virtual environment and pip install the following modules:

• TableauServerConnection
• requests
• tableau_api_lib
• python-dotenv

Fill out env.txt with your API token and Tableau Server information and rename it to .env.

Here's where you can create a Personal Access Token: https://help.tableau.com/current/online/en-us/security_personal_access_tokens.htm

Download Workbooks for Git Revision

One of the capabilities that Tableau Server does not offer is integration with Git. You can view the previous revisions with Tableau Server, but only up to certain number of revisions (I think it's up to 20? 25?). As someone who used to work in Audit and Monitoring department, that was heart-breaking. However, not all hope is lost since there is a an effective way of downloading the workbooks without using the UI, which involves lot of multiple mouse-clicking.

Run the download_workbook.py and follow the prompt. It's interactive!

• User will select some numbers corresponding to the project and the workbooks they need to download
• Once the selection is complete, the workbooks will be downloaded and place in a directory which gets created with the same name of the workbook (if one doesn't already exist).
• The files are ready to be added, committed and push to the repo.

Quick shout-out to this youtube video as it saves me the trouble of some readings🤫: https://youtu.be/swasTFYM_Gs

Create Groups, Projects and Set Permission for each group for the Project + Create Sub-projects with Inherited Permission from Projects

This is particularly useful when you have different Tableau sites and/or servers that you need to configure the same group permission with the same project name. Save you a lot of mouse-clicking.

• Update variables.py according to your needs (Project name, group name, group capability, etc). The section letter is specified to help locate the block of code that uses those variables in the create_projects.py.

• Run create_group.py to create groups. Define the name and the minimum site role the group should have within group_obj variable in variables.py. This will call query_groups.py and display the existing groups before new group is being created.

• Modify the create_projects.py in TODO to define the name of the project/sub-project to be created as well as the list of groups to be configured with the appropriate capability.

  • Note 1: When projects are created, 'All User' gets automatically configured with a default permission for all the capabilities (ex. Read/Write for Workbooks, Flow, Metrics, etc.). There are functions created in remove_permission_util.py that will get called when running create_projects.py to address this and 'All User' will get 'None' template permission as a default.
  • Note 2: When creating sub-projects, the user that invokes the API will automatically get configured with Project Leader capability for all the sub-projects. User will be asked to input their username in order to remove such capability from those sub-projects.

Miscellaneous

Query excisting groups

Run the query_groups.py to get json data on the existing groups.

Delete a group or multiple groups

Run the delete_group.py and follow the prompt, just like download_workbook.py. It's interactive!