The TableauMagic DataTables Extension v1.0.0 is now available for general use; if you have Tableau Desktop 2018.2 or greater, all you have to do is download the .trex file and start using it in your dashboards today.

Note: we have released version 1.10 thanks to support from Tableau and their development team.

DataTables.trexDownload

Usage

  • Create a worksheet with the data you want to be displayed in the DataTable. 
  • Add the worksheet to a dashboard. 
  • Drag an Extension to the dashboard and use the downloaded trex file.
  • Configure the Extension and connect it to a worksheet. 

Note: This extension by design listens for actions and filters on the connected worksheet; this means you can have multiple worksheets with various visualisations filtering the Extension connected worksheet.

About

The TableauMagic DataTables Extension was created to:

  • Improve my understanding of this wonderful Tableau functionality.
  • Leverage the widely used DataTables.net libraries in Tableau dashboards.
  • Provide an open-source example for others to look at, learn from, and improve upon.
  • Have some serious fun.

I have open-sourced the code under the MIT license; you can find the link to the GitHub repository here: https://github.com/tableaumagic/tableau-datatables-extension

If you think there is anything I can improve on, please let me know at via Twitter at @thoang1000, or via email at admin@tableau.toanhoang.com

Install Guide

To install the code and get up and running:

  • Install Node.js and NPM
  • Install Yarn
  • Install Git

Once installed, clone this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/tableaumagic/tableau-datatables-extension.git

Run the following yarn command to install the required third-party libraries:

$ yarn install

Use npm to install a http-server

$ npm install http-server -g

Start the http-server

$ http-server

Open the datatables.trex file from the cloned GitHub repository in Tableau Desktop 2018.2 or greater. Enjoy.

Credits

Thank you to the wonderful people of the Tableau community for providing me with feedback, special thanks to:

  • David Pires @davidmpires
  • Josh Tapley @josh_tapley
  • Rajeev Pandey @rajvivan

77 COMMENTS

  1. This is a fantastic extension!! When I tried to use this extension, it only pulls 10000 rows though, is that the limitation, is there a way to bypass this limitation?

    Thanks so much for this.

  3. Seems like an excellent little plugin!
    From a data security standpoint, is any data transferred to you for processing or is it all done at the Tableau server level?

  4. Hi Toan,
    Your extension works well for dashboard with single worksheet and it’s pretty amazing!
    We’ve encountered below scenario and need your guidance on that:
    We’ve around 4-5 worksheets in a dashboard which shares common column(dimension) among them, would it be possible to create a single excel table which will show data from all 4-5 worksheets as it is on Tableau dashboard?

    • If you can create a Worksheet with the data, then yes; this Worksheet does not even need to be visible, you can have your visible worksheets and an additional floating Worksheet which can be resized to be invisible.

  6. the extension works on desktop but it doesnt dispay any data once published on server. I granted permission and all, any ideas?
    Also, is there a way to show the number of row drop down menu with the plug ins?

      • Toan, thanks for the quick response. When you say whitelist, you mean granting access through server>settings>extensions? I have done that, granted full data access but it didnt fix the issue. Is it because I have actions set up for the data sheet? The action is set to exclude all values unless I click on the table.
        I don’t understand why it works flawlessly on my desktop but not online.
        thanks for all the help.

          • I believe the issue is that once it’s published, the extension does not update with the underlying data once I filter it using actions. For instance, my action is to exclude all data unless I click on a table, once I click on the table the raw data populates. I think the issue with the extension is that the raw data is not populating because it was initially published by excluding the data unless action is taken. How could I possibly fix that?

          • I will need to look at that, it will likely require some small modifications to the javascript code. I assume that you are hosting the extension internally?

          • Yes we are hosting it internally on server and embedding the dashboard. What can I do to help you with this? thanks for all the help

  7. I’m having some trouble getting the data to download when I hit the Plug-in buttons. When clicked they take a few seconds and look like they’re pressed but then nothing pops up.

    Am I missing something?

  8. When Choosing a filter, the data table is not getting refreshed. The old data appears as such. Kindly help in refreshing the data table on filtering values in dashboard.

  9. Love the extension, but running into a strange behavior. I am able to use the extension fine with some data tables in a workbook. I have a different one, off a different data set (it is at a finer granularity than the others that work). When I run the extension, it comes up completely empty (white) and never populates. The data table view that the extension is based off, has data. Any thoughts?

  10. Hi Toan,

    I’m having an issue with the maximum number of records displayed. I’ve configured it to be Unlimited and Underlying but when the extension populates I see Showing 1 to 10 of 10,000.

    Any advice to see everything?

    Thanks!

  11. Amazing extension. Thank you so much looking for this extension to embed on dashboard.
    I do see that it’s pulling only 10k records though i have selected unlimited in underlying data. Other one, when I click CSV, don’t see anything happen, didn’t ask for save option. Do I need to do anything to overcome these two.

    Thanks!

    • Hi there, unlimited I believe only worlds for underlying data, i believe summary data there is a limit of 10k records. The export plugins only work when published online. Sorry, I have not revisited this extension in a while.

      • Thanks for your suggestion, now I am able to download the csv file after adding on server. Another problem is whenever click to download csv file from Tableau sever (published workbook on server) it’s taking long time and getting memory cache error (Ah Snap), believe it’s trying to pull all on data browser cache. Is there any way to run this on background (async).

  12. This extension is great! Do you know if there’s a way to have it show a crosstab type table? For example, if I have Year on Rows with profit $ on label, can the datatables extension show that?

      • Hi Toan,

        Ahh, got it. I’m not a coder, but will take a look at it in more detail. Would be super helpful to have something like this work with crosstab data too.

  13. Hi! This extension helps us a lot! We only have a slight problem when we filter the data, as it doesn’t refresh the viz if the filtered data has less than aprox. 2-3 rows. If more rows after the filtering is done, it works very well. Any thoughts on this? Thank you!

  14. Hello Hoang,
    I really appreciate your extension. I found a bug on IE11. IE11 does not display the data grid and stay on index.html file. Please adivse.

    • Can you please download v1.1 and give that a try (downloable on this website or through the Tableau Extension Gallary). Tableau helped sort out some usability issues, so that might solve this issue. Let me know if not, and I will investigate over the weekend.

  18. Hello Toan Hoang~! How are you doing?
    I have another issue for the datatable. Could you please advise for that?
    Case: Update the datatable layout and configuration and push to the server.
    I can see the updates on Tableau server but when I connect the page under iframe, I still can see old version page.
    Please advise for that. Thank you in advance.

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  21. Hi Toan,
    I love this extension! I’m running into an issue where users with viewer licenses on our server can’t use it. I’m assuming that this is because that license type doesn’t allow the user to view underlying data. I’m guessing it can’t be solved, but just thought I’d check to see if you know of a work around to make it work.

    Thanks! Erin

  23. Hi Toan Hoang,

    This is great work, I just want to understand on how you worked on the size portion of data table. Is it automatically leveraging the size from Tableau Dashboard Objects or are you manually parsing the size in your HTML Code. If you are leveraging it automatically could you share your size portion of the code. so that I can try and implement with the extension I am developing.

  24. I love this extension!
    The only issue I found is that when downloading a csv or xlsx, the file I get has an empty name (including only the file extension). Is there a workaround for this? Or maybe I’m doing something wrong.
    Thanks.

  26. Toan, love this extension and have been using it for some time. I went and downloaded the most recent version from the Tableau gallery but I am no longer getting the options for the plug-ins (download options). Have they moved elsewhere?

  28. hi Toan. Yeh, I am indeed trying to find the code for changing number of rows that show by default. I see the datatables code references, however cannot find where it is in files in the extension. i think it might be in datatables.min.js however can’t seem to find it.

  29. Does using the new “sandboxed” version remove functionality for the export options? I’m not seeing the “Plugins” tab in the configuration screen, and none of the export options are available to me. I have activated and given permissions to extensions everywhere I can think of. I am trying to export a simple worksheet with 5 columns. What am I missing?

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