Personal access token (PAT) admin control | New in Tableau 2023.2

0:00Hey, it's Tim here and 23.2 Tableau have

0:02added additional capabilities to manage

0:05personal access tokens. To find out what

0:08they are and to see what those options are,

0:10let's get stuck in.

0:11Okay, so you're probably wondering, hey,

0:13what are personal access tokens? Well, if

0:15you don't know what they are, Tableau

0:16actually describes them to you here in the

0:18general tab. If you scroll down to the

0:20personal access token sections, it actually

0:22gives you a description, but I'll do it in

0:24plain English as well.

0:25They're just essentially long lived

0:27authentication tokens that allow users to

0:29sign into the Tableau REST API without

0:32requiring hard coded credentials, ie

0:34username and password. So instead of a

0:36username and password, you essentially get

0:39given a token.

0:40So a token is something like, let's say I

0:42create a token called test, that token

0:44would have a name called test, it would

0:47then have a key and it would also have a

0:49secret essentially. And so what that allows

0:52you to do is essentially use that instead

0:54of a user name,

0:54and password. And the idea is that really

0:56only you in the application should know

0:58that information, and therefore nothing

1:00else should really know those pieces of

1:03information. And they're also sort of quite

1:05obscure. In fact, what we can do is we can

1:08let me go ahead and show you how to create

1:10a personal access token.

1:12If you go to your account settings and you

1:14scroll down, you can see here's the

1:16personal access token interface. So we can

1:18go ahead and create a personal access token

1:20called the test, create a token, and you'll

1:23see that this one gets an expiration date

1:25of August the 12th.

1:27This is the name of the token, this is the

1:28secret, and you can copy this secret. And

1:30because you're all seeing this, this means

1:32I'm going to delete this straight away.

1:35But nonetheless, you could then use this to

1:37do something on my Tableau Cloud instance

1:40with this particular login. So because you

1:42've all seen it, I'm going to go ahead and

1:43revoke the token straight away. And there

1:45you go, it's completely gone.

1:47So that's how you create them and that's

1:48how you use them. Now, up until recently,

1:51people have been able to create this, but

1:52there hasn't been a way for admins to

1:54really manage how they work.

1:56So what we can go ahead and do is we go to

1:58the Settings tab here, go down to General,

2:00you can see here it's at the top, and then

2:02scroll down to the personal access token

2:05section.

2:06You have to keep scrolling because Tableau

2:07keeps adding stuff to this and they don't

2:09give you a quick way to go and find the

2:10specific thing you're actually interested

2:12in. There we go, we finally got there,

2:15managed to fill the space with some chat.

2:17So here we are, personal access tokens. Now

2:19you have these options. So you can enable

2:21personal access tokens on the site. So you

2:23can go ahead and disable them so people can

2:25actually create them, which is quite good,

2:27actually, it's important to be able to do

2:29that because

2:30people are given these applications, you

2:32kind of want to make sure that you have

2:34some sort of oversight of that. The other

2:36thing is you can say look, all users on the

2:38site can do this, or you could make certain

2:41users in a specific group have this ability

2:44.

2:44So you could, for example, go and get users

2:45from your test group to have this

2:47capability. And so they'll be the only ones

2:49able to create those personal access tokens

2:51. The second thing is you can set an

2:53expiration period.

2:54So if you have an enterprise wide,

2:55expiration or password cycle management,

2:58you know, set up, you can go ahead and set

3:00it to 180 days, which is the default, or in

3:02some organizations, they might have a

3:04specific number, let's say 120.

3:07You can go ahead and just type that in, let

3:09me just do that now. And once we've done

3:11all that, you can go ahead and hit save.

3:14And that immediately means that those have

3:16been changed. Now, the weird thing is what

3:19I would still like to be able to do is to

3:21get some oversight of all these personal

3:23access tokens.

3:24I'm not sure if that's something that's

3:25coming in the future. But I do think it

3:27would be really, really nice just to see

3:29all the personal access tokens that have

3:31been created somewhere in this interface. I

3:33'm sure Tableau has already thought about

3:34this.

3:35But that would be sort of the next step,

3:36sort of an ability to audit these and see

3:38when they're being used to how frequently

3:40they're being used, and potentially even

3:42what applications and what activities are

3:44being run from them.

3:46I know that you can already get some of

3:48this with specific data from Postgres or

3:50specific data from the auditing

3:52capabilities of Tableau. But again, just

3:54making this more visible and more readily

3:56available, I think will be a great step

3:58forward.

3:59If you know more about these and I've

4:00missed something, let me know in the

4:02comments below. I'm always very conscious

4:04that this is not a topic area that I'm

4:06super confident in.

4:08So if you know something that I've missed

4:10that should be in this video, let me know

4:12in the comments and I'll go ahead and I'll

4:14mark it as pinned on this video so other

4:16people can see your comment.

4:18Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in

4:19the next one.

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