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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/salesforce-cloud-tableau-desktop.rst

⇱ Build Salesforce Visualizations in Tableau Desktop

Build Salesforce Visualizations in Tableau Desktop

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to live Salesforce data and build visualizations in Tableau.

Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way businesses use data to solve problems. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Salesforce data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Salesforce and build visualizations from Salesforce data in Tableau.

About Salesforce Data Integration

Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:

  • Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
  • Create atomic and batch update operations.
  • Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
  • Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
  • See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.

Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:

  • other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
  • preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
  • databases and data warehouses.

For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.


Getting Started


CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Salesforce, allowing you to easily build visualizations from live Salesforce data in Tableau without installing connectors. As you build visualizations, Tableau generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Salesforce, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Salesforce data.

Configure Salesforce Connectivity for Tableau

Connectivity to Salesforce from Tableau is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Salesforce data from Tableau, we start by creating and configuring a Salesforce connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Salesforce" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Salesforce uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Salesforce. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
  4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Salesforce data from Tableau.

Visualize Live Salesforce Data in Tableau

To establish a connection from Tableau Desktop to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server, follow these steps.

  1. In Tableau Desktop, open a new book. Under To a Server, select More, then Microsoft SQL Server. 👁 Selecting Microsoft SQL Server as the connection type.
  2. Enter your credentials:
    • Server: enter the Virtual SQL Server endpoint and port separated by a comma: tds.cdata.com,14333
    • Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, Salesforce1).
    • Authentication: select Use a specific username and password.
    • Username: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected].
    • Password: enter the PAT you previously generated.
    • Require SSL: leave this selected.
    👁 Configuring the connection to the Virtual SQL Server API.
  3. Click Sign In.
  4. Select the Database (Connect AI connection) you wish to work with and opt for a Live or Extract Connection type.
  5. Select the table(s) you wish to visualize. If you select multiple tables, define the relationship between the tables using the appropriate columns. 👁 Selecting tables to visualize (Salesforce is shown)
  6. Select the fields to visualize. 👁 Visualizing live data (Salesforce is shown).

Real-Time Access to Salesforce Data from Data Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Salesforce data from your Tableau workbook. You can create new visualizations, build dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining live access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from applications like Tableau, refer to our Connect AI page.