It’s obvious that people don’t like to wait for things to occur. For example, you don’t want to check your email box again and again until you get a notification or alert of an incoming email. And while working on a tableau 2019.4 platform, you also want to have the same service.
In a Tableau Bootcamp, you’ll discover that almost every tableau user has created some processes and events on this platform, building a workflow from certification of data sources to filing a ticket. Many of these procedures need you to continuously check Tableau to see if something you want to happen, and then respond.
Therefore, Webhooks has been added to the Tableau Developer Platform in the upcoming release of Tableau 2019.4. Webhooks allows you to generate the specific workflows on the tableau. So when an event occurs, you’ll get the notification on a specified gadget. Hence, when a workflow is created, you don’t need to wait for its completion and have to check repeatedly.
What are Webhooks?
Webhooks are simple techniques through which one computer system is able to notify another when an event happens by using typical web technologies, like HTTP and JSON. Webhooks enables you to join Tableau to your apps, which means any action in Tableau Server or Online can trigger a different app. To understand this in a simple way for initial setups, review this example, it will send an e-mail alert whenever a new workbook is published or deleted. And in complex setups, you can integrate various Tableau triggers to refresh extracts in superior workflows. Webhooks brings in a lot of stimulating opportunities to automate your Tableau usage. So here you’ll know what Webhooks are, why you should use Webhooks, and how can you use them in your Tableau setup.
Assume that you have any System X handling lots of works, and System Y needs to respond to some particular works or processes taking place on System X. So here you get a few options:
- Constantly Checking: – Continuously keep an eye on system X to check if the particular task is going straight or not. In that case, System Y has to uphold a copy of the preceding status of System X and continually test out for a new state that imparts some additional load on System X. Both systems are doing a ton of extra work for something that may not happen that often.
- Scheduled Checking: -Check the System X after a specific time interval or at a scheduled time. The load is compacted by merely checking from time to time, but also depends on the schedule period. There may be extensive delays for checking by System Y whenever anything happens on System X.
- Requesting Notification: – In this process, System Y asks System X to informs when some specified events occur and after that waits for the notification. And when anything happens, System X informs System Y.
What is the Use of Webhooks in Tableau?
Webhooks has great potential to perform the following works:
- When refreshing an extract fails, automatically it files a ticket in Service.
- When updating of the workbook completes, it notifies your team through their Slack channel.
- When publishing of data source is done, emails a data steward requesting the team to evaluate and verify it.
- When refreshing the workbook is completed successfully, produce a PDF, and publish it to SharePoint.
Webhooks will always inform you when something happens in a system on Tableau, so the information will help you to understand that when you can proceed further. In the preliminary release of Webhooks with Tableau 2019.4, there are only 13 events accessible to create custom workflows:
- For Workbook
- Workbook Created
- Workbook Updated
- Workbook Deleted
- Workbook Refresh Started
- Workbook Refresh Succeeded
- Workbook Refresh Failed
- Workbook View Deleted
- For Data Source
- Data Source Created
- Data Source Updated
- Data Source Deleted
- Data Source Refresh Started
- Data Source Refresh Succeeded
- Data Source Refresh Failed
With the upcoming releases, more events are expected to be added to the workflow in Tableau 2019.4.
Create and Manage Webhooks
Site and System admins are allowed to create and manage Webhooks with RESR API within the site. Either you can write your own code for this, or you can utilize the Postman API Client tool from the existing Webhooks REST API collection. “Postman” is a great tool that allows easy access to RESTful API, and you don’t require writing code.
For creating a Webhook message, these three things need to be specified in Webhooks to issue a create command in endpoint:
- Event for which you want notification/alert
- URL where you want to receive the message
- Name defined for the task done by Webhook
Testing of Webhooks
You must need to verify and test the created Webhook carefully to find whether it is working correctly or not, and then you can build your workflow accurately. Luckily, you’ve got a number of sites, such as webhook. site or testwebhooks.com, which provides free access to test your Webhooks without doing any kind of setup. They do provide a temporary URL to point at your Webhook.
For testing the Webhook, point it at the URL presented by the site and click the Webhook. If everything is fine and functioning well, a pop-up message will appear inclusive of information regarding the event.
Responding to Webhooks
You need a well-developed system for responding to the messages received through Webhooks. You might require an IT specialist or developer to build such a program. Moreover, there are several low-code websites like Zapier and Automate.io, which offer native support for Webhooks and help to create automated workflows.
Start Automating Your Workflows!
Webhooks is a general approach to activate automated workflows that counter any action on events in your Tableau environment. So you can initiate creating custom workflows with Tableau Server and Tableau Online with the upcoming release of Tableau 2019.4.
You can sign up for a Tableau Bootcamp consulting to discover more features and functionalities of Webhooks in Tableau. ExistBI offers Tableau training and Tableau consulting in the US, UK, and Europe. Join the Tableau 2019.4 beta to start creating automatic workflows today.
