0:00Hey, it's Tim here. In 21.4 Tableau have
0:02brought along two features, virtual
0:04connections and
0:05centralized row level security. In this
0:07video, I'm going to touch on virtual
0:09connections.
0:09Centralized row level security is a topic
0:11of its own. So I'll cover that in the next
0:14video
0:14after this one. Now, the great thing about
0:17this is it allows you to create a
0:19connection on server
0:20that you can then democratize through your
0:23organization. It works very similar to
0:25something
0:25like a published data source except for
0:26this is nothing like a published data
0:28source. This is its
0:29own thing, its own completely different
0:31type of asset in Tableau. And it allows you
0:34to essentially
0:34create a connections and apply row level
0:37security to it and policies as well to it
0:39and then move
0:40that onto a folder or project, put it in a
0:42collection, connect to it in desktop, set
0:45it up
0:46in a web edit video. It's basically the
0:48dream connection you could possibly create
0:51with Tableau.
0:52It does require the data management add on,
0:54but nonetheless, let's find out how this
0:56works. So
0:57I'm going to go here to the new button here
0:58and you'll see that the option there is
1:00virtual
1:00connections. When we do that, it does open
1:02it in a new window for me. So I'll bring it
1:04onto screen
1:04so you can see. Now, when I scroll down
1:07this list, you'll see there's a few data
1:09sources. And if you
1:09can't see the one that you need in here, it
1:12's a good sign that Tableau is calling out
1:14the
1:15developers that are building this. And
1:16currently it's just a list of Tableau
1:18essentially. So
1:19it's a good hint that other people will be
1:21making these connections in the future. So
1:23if you can't
1:24see what you need here, then petition Table
1:27au or go to the Tableau exchange where no
1:29doubt these
1:30connectors will live. And you should be
1:31able to sort of start using this once
1:33connected apps and
1:34all of this stuff starts to roll out. Now,
1:36if I go ahead and select Snowflake, I'm
1:38going to connect
1:38to a Snowflake instance here. To do this,
1:41in a previous video, I showed you how to
1:43set up this
1:44demo database for this particular use case.
1:46So for this one, we're just going to set up
1:48the virtual
1:48connection. We're going to connect to it in
1:50desktop and web edit and show you how it
1:52all
1:52works. But for now, let's go ahead and let
1:54me type in my details. I'll switch to the
1:56authentication
1:57page after I've typed in all my details
1:58here, because I want to keep those secret.
2:00Okay, so
2:01I've logged in here, everything's working.
2:03I'll close my password manager down and you
2:05can see
2:06that we've set up the connection part of
2:08the virtual connection. Now the next thing
2:10I need
2:10to do specifically for Snowflake is choose
2:12a warehouse, select a database. This is
2:14going to
2:14be the Tableau demo database. And you can
2:16see here on the left hand side that once it
2:18's loaded up the
2:20data tables in this particular connection,
2:22just give it a second to connect, you'll
2:25see that here
2:26we have employees, invoices and orders.
2:28These are the tables that I set up in the
2:29previous video.
2:31Now what's cool about this is you can also
2:33use a custom SQL connection as well, like
2:35you can
2:35normally do in Tableau desktop as well. So
2:37that's something to be aware of. I'll
2:39select all three,
2:40because what I want to do is enable users
2:42to be able to create a relationship between
2:44these three
2:44data sources. And in the next video, I'm
2:46going to show you how row level security
2:48works using one of
2:49these tables, the employees table as an
2:51entitlement table. But nonetheless, let's
2:53drag all three into
2:54the view and you can see that they drop in.
2:57Now the nice thing here is you get some
2:58metadata about
2:59these tables. The table name, the
3:01visibility, this is a feature within the
3:04virtual connections that
3:06allows you to hide or show them when a user
3:07connects to them. I'll show you what this
3:09means
3:09a little later on. The database that it's
3:12coming from, the schema in the database,
3:14whether the data
3:15is live or as an extract, you can change
3:17that for all these connections or you can
3:20change it for
3:21each connection one at a time. So be
3:23absolutely sort of clear about what you
3:26want that to do,
3:27generally speaking. Now the data policy, we
3:29have none at the moment, that will be in
3:31the next video
3:32and then you've got the original table name
3:34, this is nothing new. Now one thing I didn
3:36't realize
3:37when I started playing around with this is
3:38that there's a whole other section down
3:40here and it's
3:41not obvious that you can sort of drag this
3:43up. So if you just hover your mouse over
3:45that sort of
3:46bottom lip, you'll see that you can then
3:48drag this up and you get the table sort of
3:50coming through.
3:50So now this has got a bit more space, this
3:53is really nice. I really wish that what
3:55they did is
3:56if you put three tables in, it just moved
3:58this up to sort of match the three tables
4:00like this.
4:01So you didn't have a scroll bar but you
4:02could immediately see that you had some
4:04metadata here
4:04to view, that would be a really nice sort
4:07of addition to the feature. Now if I go to
4:09this
4:09little section here, you can see that I
4:11have these Tableau prep like icons here and
4:13actually this is
4:14good to see. Tableau bringing some things
4:16we've asked for from Tableau prep into the
4:18connection
4:19experience for virtual connections and this
4:21has been a big ask. I personally don't
4:23agree with
4:23that sort of way of thinking, maybe that's
4:25another video but nonetheless the features
4:27here and so you
4:28can see when I click on this table view, I
4:30get a Tableau view of this particular table
4:32. Now if I
4:34switch from employees to invoices, this
4:35preview will change. I'll let it load first
4:37and you can
4:38see that actually happening. There you go,
4:40we've got the employees table there and you
4:42can see here
4:43that everything is pretty nicely set up.
4:45Now what I did in the SQL statement when I
4:47was loading the
4:48data into Snowflake is I actually changed
4:51one of the usernames here to match my name
4:54because for
4:54row level security this has got to work. So
4:57Laura over here in Seattle was the
4:58unfortunate candidate
5:00and I actually changed her full name to
5:01match mine, Tim Neguenna and that's because
5:04that's the
5:04name that I've actually got on Tableau
5:06server for the row level security to work.
5:08So we'll come back
5:09to that a little later on but nonetheless
5:11if I go over to invoices you'll see that
5:13again we load up
5:14a preview at 2155 rows of the data set. So
5:18everything is working as expected, this is
5:21sort of doing the
5:22right job and again you can see there that
5:24I have the salesperson name in there. So
5:27everything is
5:28working fine, the connection's good, now it
5:30comes to sort of actually saving them and
5:32making them
5:33sort of available to users. Well there's a
5:35save button up here and there's a publish
5:37button up
5:38here. Now I kind of got fooled into this
5:40when I first used this, the save button
5:43actually saves
5:43a draft and it's sort of a different
5:45behavior. So when I click save here you'll
5:47see that it says
5:48saved draft virtual connection but when I
5:51hit publish that is actually when the
5:53change is made
5:54so you can now see it's asking me where to
5:55save this. So this is what you want to make
5:57sure you do,
5:58a publish saves the actual details and save
6:01saves the draft. It's kind of a weird sort
6:04of meta but
6:05nonetheless that's just the way it is. I'm
6:07wondering if that will change in the future
6:09,
6:10maybe the draft could be automatically
6:11saved and then you can just hit publish
6:13once and that can be
6:14it. But nonetheless that's now saved, the
6:16virtual connection is available. If I go
6:19back to my list
6:21you can see that Snowflake is now available
6:23here and if I click on that I'll actually
6:25get the three
6:26tables available. So this virtual
6:28connection is set up, it's ready to be used
6:30and we can start using
6:31it. I'm going to show you how to do that
6:33next. Now I know most of you are using
6:35Tableau Desktop still,
6:36WebEdit is picking up pace, I can't tell
6:39you enough, really start using WebEdit,
6:41you'll be surprised that some parts are
6:43actually getting to feature parity with
6:45Tableau Desktop.
6:46But if you're still using desktop that's
6:48absolutely fine. Let me show you how to
6:50connect to that
6:51virtual connection. Now what you have to
6:53remember is that this is a server-based
6:54connection so you
6:56have to go to the top here and select Table
6:57au Server. I'm actually already logged in
6:59and what
7:00I can do is I can go down to this drop down
7:02and immediately select virtual connections.
7:04You can
7:04see that this connection is already here, I
7:07can select connect and when we do that we
7:09get the
7:10three tables. So at this point the server
7:12is actually sort of using my access and
7:14delegating
7:15access to this virtual connection and this
7:17virtual connections comes with these three
7:20tables. So me
7:21as a user I'm now empowered to go ahead and
7:23create my own data model and I can actually
7:25go in here
7:26and bring the invoices in. For this
7:28particular one I know this should be
7:30employee ID. Let's go ahead
7:32and actually match those two up so you can
7:34actually see this working. Let's bring in
7:36orders
7:36and let's do exactly the same thing
7:38employee ID and let's get that working as
7:41well. So that's a
7:42virtual connection pretty much set up. I
7:44can go to sheet one and there we have it
7:46the virtual
7:47connections working inside of Tableau
7:48Desktop. I can start working with it. In
7:50the next video
7:51we'll look at row level security so I will
7:53save this workbook and keep it available
7:55for the dat
7:56demo but nonetheless we've seen pretty much
7:58everything you need to see here in terms of
8:00connecting to a virtual connection. Now
8:02what is interesting is that it doesn't come
8:04up as a
8:04published data source as a server-based
8:06connection. It's got a standard connection
8:08here so you've got
8:09this sort of database icon. So what's
8:12actually happening here is that the user is
8:15first going
8:16after Tableau server and then from Tableau
8:18server Tableau server is managing the
8:19permissions
8:20and then passing on that live connection
8:22over to Snowflake or whatever and so that's
8:24a really
8:25important sort of mechanic to be aware of.
8:27I think these icons need sort of a bit of
8:29an update because
8:30I would still expect to see the server icon
8:32here so a user knows where to go and debug
8:34this because
8:35of course if I right click on this and I
8:37select edit data source and I go in here
8:39you'll see that
8:39it actually gives me the edit connection
8:41and it's going to throw a bug here because
8:43essentially I
8:44need to go and do this over on the server.
8:46It's not going to sort of be working over
8:48here so it's
8:49like a really interesting sort of challenge
8:52here that I think Tableau have to kind of
8:54keep
8:54everything consistent. Maybe this is sort
8:56of a launch bug, maybe it's because I'm
8:58using the
8:58pre-release version here but nonetheless I
9:01would expect sort of that visual icon use
9:04to be
9:04consistent so if I'm connecting to server
9:06to use a virtual connection I would hope to
9:08see a server
9:09icon there but nonetheless this is working
9:12fine. Now let me head back to the area that
9:14I was in
9:15before in fact let me head back to this
9:17browser window here because you can see
9:18everything is
9:19still set up. Now one of the nice things
9:21you can do is of course you can make
9:23something
9:23hidden for a temporary period so in this
9:27case I'm going to hit publish now the invo
9:29ices table is
9:30hidden but I can still work on this. I can
9:32still now make it available and hit save
9:35and now I'm
9:35saving the draft it's not yet been
9:37published. I can test something make sure
9:39everything works and
9:40then when I'm done I can go ahead hit
9:42publish and now the virtual connection is
9:44up to date.
9:44This allows you to come back to a virtual
9:46connection and edit it over time add data
9:48policies and centralize row level security
9:51policies to it over time as well. So these
9:53are
9:54these things are going to have longevity
9:55and unlike other connections they're not
9:57going to die a death
9:58because there's actually some weight behind
10:00these and hopefully they'll start to
10:02collect the
10:02metadata that people have always wanted.
10:05Now the last place I'll show you how to use
10:06this is of
10:07course web edit. So how do we do this well
10:09let's go to the 21.4 folder here and let's
10:12just go ahead
10:12and create a new workbook. Now when we
10:14create a new workbook of course it's web
10:16edit we do exactly
10:17the same thing select virtual connection
10:19select snowflake connect and now we're back
10:22in here we've
10:22got the web edit version of this we can go
10:25ahead drag in the employees table and we
10:28can essentially
10:28do the same thing as we did before. There's
10:30nothing really new here but nonetheless
10:32this is how it
10:33works and people always ask for these
10:35things if I don't cover it someone will say
10:37hey you didn't
10:38show us how to do it and here I am. So
10:40there we go that's the connection setup
10:43super simple exactly
10:44the same thing we've got web edit here we
10:46've got desktop over here the exact same
10:48setup and that's
10:49pretty much virtual connections for you. So
10:51thanks for watching check out the next
10:53video on centralized
10:54row level security to see how that works
10:56that's a bit more of a complicated video
10:58but I think
10:59you're going to like it so check it out
11:01thanks for watching and I'll catch you in
11:03the next one.
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