Using Tableau with Workfront

[lauram26269131]

Hello, My company is looking into using Tableau to help with the creation of more visual reports. Right now we're in the discovery phase and wanted to reach out to the community to hear others experiences with Tableau. How was it to integrate/connect it to Workfront? Is report creation as easy as the drag and drop demo we were shown? Anything we should know about Tableau and how it integrates with Workfront would be appreciated. Thanks! Laura Manley System Administrator Stream Companies

[DavidCo3]

I reviewed Tableau for a couple of weeks, but found it exceedingly complex to setup and work with the relationships between the various data sources/tables that I needed for Workfront (Projects, Users, Tasks, Issues, Hours, etc). PowerBI on the other hand was much more flexible and intuitive in terms of building the data model, and that's what we ended up going with. I currently have it setup to refresh its data directly from Workfront's API (though this is not easy to do this out of the box and requires a bit of work and tips/tricks). Having said that, Tableau has more recently launched a new 'data prep' tool which, whilst I haven't used it, looks like it should have similar functionality to PowerBI in that respect. Without reviewing it all again, I'd say that if your data structure is pretty flat and simple then Tableau is probably slightly prettier, but a bit more expensive. PowerBI is cost effective, and super flexible and being enhanced all the time. I'm glad I chose the latter. Regards, David Cornwell

[JamieHi]

Correct me if I'm wrong - but I think Tableau has a cost to author but all reports are free for anyone to view. Power BI is the reverse - which is a shame because for example we have portfolio reporting that we would love IT as a whole to be able to view, but wouldn't ever get the sign-off of Power BI Pro for ~200 people... Jamie Hill JLL

[DevenRa]

Hi All, Great convo here! There are a number of existing Workfront customers that are integrating reporting tools like Tableau, PowerBI, and Qlik with Workfront. In fact, here at LeapPoint we are using our own Workfront-Tableau integration for our own executive reporting on things like team utilization and project revenue by industry alignment (screen shot attached). Data can be aggregated through the API using LeapPoint's "DataConnect" platform. We then push the data from our secure Azure (or AWS) cloud directly to your BI server. These reports and dashboards can then easily be "iframed" back into Workfront to ensure a holistic experience. If you do not have enterprise licenses of tools like Tableau we can provide you with a desktop version as a part of our package. We also offer data analytics advisory support to ensure that you are aggregating and visualizing data that tells a valuable business story. Please feel free to reach out if you'd like to know more about how we do this. Your Workfront CSMs and Account Reps can probably get you in touch with some other folks who are doing some cool stuff with BI reporting. Thanks! Deven Deven Ravel LeapPoint

[DevenRa]

Hi Jamie, What team are you with at JLL? LeapPoint has been working with 4 or 5 departments at JLL for the last year or so. I believe that the JLL Transformation Office (TMO) has done an internal Tableau integration with their Workfront instance. I can put you in touch with their system administrator if you'd like? Thanks, Deven Deven Ravel LeapPoint

[AMLSAm]

Hello! I'm following this conversation as well....I use Tableau and Tableau Server product and LOVE it. It's made my job much easier. With a basic data set, it is as easy as they made it seem....drag and drop. I am excited about their new data prep function. Where it get more detailed and cumbersome is merging/blending data in different sources, etc. BUT, I'm still a fan! I have recently been on-boarded to Workfront and am still exploring how to get the data from Workfront into Tableau. We believe it will be using an API method, but again we are in the early stages of exploring and discovering a solution. I look forward to others comments on how they have accomplished a data connection to Tableau. Thanks! Amanda Shotkoski

[JamesBe1]

At my company, we use the API to pull all Workfront data into a central relational database that closely mirrors the Workfront objects' underlying data structure, but also has some helper tables and helper columns to make some of the more complex relationships easier to query. In this way, we pull data from Workfront, as well as other systems, into Tableau to get a unified picture of our work here. Doing things this way gives us a lot of reporting power, but it is difficult to setup at the onset and its difficult to continually update your tables with WF data in a way that's as close to live data as possible and recognizes when an object's been deleted or updated in Workfront without taking a complete snapshot of the data; Some objects are easier than others though. Recently, I've been experimenting with Tableau's Web Data Connector feature. What I like about that is it's as simple as using JavaScript (or server-side code depending on your setup) to build HTML tables. From there, some simple JSON gives their JavaScript package the ability to understand the relationships between different objects and their columns. I haven't gotten further than being able to pull a project with its tasks into tableau, but it shows some promise. James Bender Jackson/JTS

[Jyo_Mohanraj]

I have a Tableau dashboard that needs to be inserted into our Workfront system and based on a value available at the project-level filter the dashboard by each user. Is this possible and if yes, how?

[PetraOl]

you should be able to link vi an iframe a Tableau report into a WF Db

[CristinaDaexus]

hey @lauram26269131 

My company Daexus released a super-secure Adobe Analytics connector for Tableau - no 3rd party server involved and the connector only runs on your computer. I'm more than happy to set you up or anyone in your company with a free trial account if you're intrested.

Let me know!