Validating the Tableau Integration

Running the health check

The Health Check is available from the Admin area of the Insight user interface.

To run the health check, click Health Check in the Visualization section of the left-hand side panel. The health check starts as soon as the page opens and take several minutes to complete, depending on the status of the system. The health check can be re-run by clicking the Refresh button.

Each section of the reports is run sequentially. If a failure is encountered, then the reason is given and subsequent tests in that section are not run and are shown as SKIPPED.

The report is comprised of the following sections:

Mirror Health Check

These five steps reflect the configuration that Insight has read from the application.properties file.

This step tests the connectivity to the Insight mirror database that is used by the Tableau workbooks. Any failure in this section indicates that there is a problem with the MySQL server or an improper configuration in the Insight properties file.

Tableau Health Check

These five steps reflect the configuration that Insight has read from the properties file.

The following steps check the connectivity and integration with Tableau Server:

• Xpress Insight server tries to connect to the URL provided for Tableau Server. If it cannot connect to the provided URL, the resulting error is shown in the report. Connection can be caused by any of the following conditions:
  • The Tableau Server URL is incorrectly configured on the Tableau configuration page.
  • Tableau Server is not running.
  • Tableau Server is running on a different port from what is expected. To see the current port being used, log on to Tableau Server using an account with administrator privileges, run the tsm topology list-ports command, and check the gateway port.
  • A firewall or router is blocking access to Tableau Server.
• Tableau Version
  • Displays the detected version of Tableau Server.
• JS API Version
  • Displays the detected version of the Tableau JS API.
• Server Authentication
  • The Xpress Insight server attempts to log in to Tableau using the Tableau system user credentials. If this attempt is unsuccessful, make sure that the provided credentials are correct and can access the Tableau server and site (if provided).
• Tableau System User Role
  • The Xpress Insight checks whether the specified user is a system administrator or a site administrator.
• Tableau Projects
  • The Xpress Insight server attempts to log in to Tableau using the Tableau system user credentials provided and retrieve a lit of Tableau projects. If this attempt fails, check the role of the specified user within Tableau Server and make sure that it has either system administrator or site administrator privileges.
• Tableau Workbooks
  • The Xpress Insight server attempts to log in to Tableau using the Tableau system user credentials provided and retrieve a lit of Tableau workbooks. If this attempt fails, check the role of the specified user within Tableau Server and make sure that it has either system administrator or site administrator privileges.
• Trusted Ticket Authentication
  • Checks whether a trusted ticket can be generated using the system user. This checks whether the trust has been configured correctly between Tableau Server and the Xpress Insight server.
    If an error occurs with an error code of -1, the issue is likely to be one or more of the following:

    • The Xpress Insight server is not in the list of trusted hosts. This is the most common reason for this failure.
    • The specified Tableau username is not a valid server user. The Xpress Insight server uses the Tableau system user provided on the Tableau configuration page to perform this check.
• Remote Client Connection
  • Checks the URL provided for Tableau Server. If the URL is set to localhost or 127.0.0.1, a warning is shown indicating that viewing Tableau views is available only if the Web client is on the same machine as Tableau Server.

Testing with the Flow Shop Example

The Health Check can verify the connectivity between Insight and Tableau but not between Tableau and the MySQL mirror. To verify the complete end to end integration, we recommend uploading an example app to confirm that a Tableau visualization is successfully rendered.

The following steps us the Flowshop demo example app from the Insight Developer Kit. Download this from the same location that you acquired the Insight software installer itself and unzip it to a suitable location on your local machine. The instructions will upload the app and then open a Tableau view for a scenario with results data.

1. On the Insight user interface Home page, click Upload App.
2. Navigate to the Flowshop demo app in the unzipped developer kit. It is located in the tableau_reports/flowshop folder.
3. Select the flowshop.zip file.
4. The example should successfully upload. Click on the Flowshop demo tile on the Home page.
5. Click on the Shelf to open the Scenario Manager. Double-click on the scenario Scenario 1 to add it to the Shelf. Close the Scenario Manager.
6. Click on the scenario pill on the Shelf to open the scenario action menu. Click Load to load the scenario with data.
7. When the scenario has finished loading, click on the scenario action menu and click Run to execute the scenario and generate results data.
8. Click on the by Machine Gantt tab.
9. When the system has completed the execution of the scenario, the preparation of the data in the mirror and the initialization of Tableau, then you should see Tableau render a Gantt chart of the machine scheduling.