Announcing the Analytics Extensions API

Data science teams use a rapidly evolving and heterogeneous set of tools to draw insights from data. When teams can tie these tools directly into interactive visualizations in Tableau, cutting edge analysis can be seen and understood across organizations.

To further support bringing all stakeholders in the data science process together, we are proud to announce the Analytics Extensions API, available in Tableau 2020.1, as an initial release. The Analytics Extensions API creates a new frontier for extending Tableau by allowing developers to integrate new programming languages and software with our dynamic calculation language.

Along with the release of the API, Tableau’s existing Python, R, and MATLAB External Services will now be known as “Analytics Extensions.” You’ll see this name change across Tableau’s products and documentation over the next few releases.

The Analytics Extensions API is based off of the original TabPy External Services API, and TabPy can be considered Tableau’s reference API implementation. Users can connect to their own services through the TabPy/External API connection type in Tableau with support for passing credentials via basic authentication and SSL. Currently, Tableau Desktop and Server support the Evaluate API method, but we plan to extend support to other methods and welcome your feedback.

One of the core scenarios for Analytics Extensions is the integration of predictive models into Tableau visualizations. Dynamic integrations allow for real-time predictions on the latest data, flexible scenario testing, and predictions on filtered datasets that would be too large to pre-compute. Examples include integrations with Rapidminer and Ople.ai.

Existing implementations of the API include Haskell language service from Tableau Zen Master Tamas Foldi, Craig Bloodworth’s weather forecast service.

To try out sample dynamic integration of external analytical functions, try out the sample analytics extension available from the Tableau Developer Program. This extension allows for real time currency conversion, recurring rate of revenue (IRR), language translation and more.

For more details about the Analytics Extensions API, join the Tableau Developer Program and check out our webinar on the API.