Establish a Live Connection with Vercel Data using Tableau Bridge

The Tableau Bridge enables you to publish dashboards to Tableau Cloud while maintaining live connectivity with any data source. In this article, you will use the Tableau Bridge to maintain data freshness in a published workbook by listening for changes in the underlying Vercel data.

The CData ODBC drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Vercel data in Tableau Cloud due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from Tableau Cloud to Vercel, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Vercel and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can visualize and analyze Vercel data using native Tableau data types.

Connect to Vercel as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Using API Key Authentication

Vercel uses Bearer token authentication. You can use either a personal access token or an OAuth access token as the API key.

To obtain a personal access token:

1. Log into your Vercel account at https://vercel.com/
2. Navigate to Account Settings > Tokens.
3. Click Create Token, enter a name and expiration, and click Create.
4. Copy the generated token (it will only be shown once).

After obtaining your token, set the following connection properties:

• AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
• APIKey: Set this to your Vercel personal access token or OAuth access token.

Example Connection String

Profile=C:\profiles\Vercel.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;APIKey=your_access_token;

Working with Teams

Many Vercel resources are scoped to a team. To scope all requests to a specific team, set the TeamId connection property to your team's ID. You can find your team ID by querying the Teams table or from the Vercel dashboard. Alternatively, you can specify TeamId in your SQL queries using the WHERE clause where supported.

Connecting to Vercel

Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to Vercel and query data from any of the available tables such as Projects, Deployments, Teams, and Domains.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Add Vercel Data to a Dashboard

1. From a new workbook, click Data -> New Data Source -> Other Databases (ODBC).
   Select the CData Data Source Name (for example: CData API Source).
2. In the Database menu, select CData.
3. In the Table box, enter a table name or click New Custom SQL to enter an SQL query. This article retrieves the User table.
4. Drag the table onto the join area. At this point, you can include multiple tables, leveraging the built-in SQL engine to process complex data requests.
5. Click the tab for your worksheet. Columns are listed as Dimensions and Measures, which you can drag and drop onto the dashboard to create visualizations. 👁 A connection to a single table. (Salesforce is shown.)
   

Set Up Tableau Bridge as a Service

1. In the Server menu, select Start Tableau Bridge Client.
2. Sign in to the Tableau Bridge using a site admin level account.
3. If prompted, select the Tableau Cloud site where you want to publish live data. The bridge client will open and is accessible from the system tray.
4. By default, the Tableau Bridge client is set to Application mode. Select 'Switch to service' to enable Tableau Bridge to handle live connections.
5. Log in to your Tableau Cloud site as an administrator.
6. From your site, click Settings, then Bridge. 👁 The Tableau Bridge settings within Tableau Cloud.
   
7. In the Bridge settings, under Enable Clients to Maintain Live Connections, check the box labeled 'Enable Tableau Bridge clients to maintain live connections to on-premises data.'

Publish a Dashboard Containing the Live Data Source

Having configured both the Tableau Bridge and Tableau Cloud to enable live data connections, you can now publish your workbook to Tableau Cloud. From the Server menu, select Publish Workbook.

👁 Deployment of a workbook containing a live data source. (Salesforce is shown.)

After choosing the workbook name and project that you wish to publish to, configure the deployment so that the CData ODBC driver for Vercel is embedded in your workbook as a separate, live data source.

1. Under Data Sources, select the option to Edit the embedded data sources in the workbook.
2. Change Publish Type to 'Published separately,' then select a desired means of authentication.
3. Last, select 'Maintain connection to a live data source' and click the green Publish Workbook button.

The published workbook now updates alongside the underlying Vercel data. From a published dashboard, simply click the Refresh button to reflect the most recent changes.