Establish a Live Connection with Okta Data using Tableau Bridge

The Tableau Bridge enables you to publish dashboards to Tableau Cloud while maintaining live connectivity with any data source. In this article, you will use the Tableau Bridge to maintain data freshness in a published workbook by listening for changes in the underlying Okta data.

The CData ODBC drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live Okta data in Tableau Cloud due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from Tableau Cloud to Okta, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Okta and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can visualize and analyze Okta data using native Tableau data types.

Connect to Okta as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To connect to Okta, set the Domain connection string property to your Okta domain.

You will use OAuth to authenticate with Okta, so you need to create a custom OAuth application.

Creating a Custom OAuth Application

From your Okta account:

1. Sign in to your Okta developer edition organization with your administrator account.
2. In the Admin Console, go to Applications > Applications.
3. Click Create App Integration.
4. For the Sign-in method, select OIDC - OpenID Connect.
5. For Application type, choose Web Application.
6. Enter a name for your custom application.
7. Set the Grant Type to Authorization Code. If you want the token to be automatically refreshed, also check Refresh Token.
8. Set the callback URL:
   • For desktop applications and headless machines, use http://localhost:33333 or another port number of your choice. The URI you set here becomes the CallbackURL property.
   • For web applications, set the callback URL to a trusted redirect URL. This URL is the web location the user returns to with the token that verifies that your application has been granted access.
9. In the Assignments section, either select Limit access to selected groups and add a group, or skip group assignment for now.
10. Save the OAuth application.
11. The application's Client Id and Client Secret are displayed on the application's General tab. Record these for future use. You will use the Client Id to set the OAuthClientId and the Client Secret to set the OAuthClientSecret.
12. Check the Assignments tab to confirm that all users who must access the application are assigned to the application.
13. On the Okta API Scopes tab, select the scopes you wish to grant to the OAuth application. These scopes determine the data that the app has permission to read, so a scope for a particular view must be granted for the driver to have permission to query that view. To confirm the scopes required for each view, see the view-specific pages in Data Model < Views in the Help documentation.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Add Okta Data to a Dashboard

1. From a new workbook, click Data -> New Data Source -> Other Databases (ODBC).
   Select the CData Data Source Name (for example: CData Okta Source).
2. In the Database menu, select CData.
3. In the Table box, enter a table name or click New Custom SQL to enter an SQL query. This article retrieves the Users table.
4. Drag the table onto the join area. At this point, you can include multiple tables, leveraging the built-in SQL engine to process complex data requests.
5. Click the tab for your worksheet. Columns are listed as Dimensions and Measures, which you can drag and drop onto the dashboard to create visualizations.

Set Up Tableau Bridge as a Service

1. In the Server menu, select Start Tableau Bridge Client.
2. Sign in to the Tableau Bridge using a site admin level account.
3. If prompted, select the Tableau Cloud site where you want to publish live data. The bridge client will open and is accessible from the system tray.
4. By default, the Tableau Bridge client is set to Application mode. Select 'Switch to service' to enable Tableau Bridge to handle live connections.
5. Log in to your Tableau Cloud site as an administrator.
6. From your site, click Settings, then Bridge.
7. In the Bridge settings, under Enable Clients to Maintain Live Connections, check the box labeled 'Enable Tableau Bridge clients to maintain live connections to on-premises data.'

Publish a Dashboard Containing the Live Data Source

Having configured both the Tableau Bridge and Tableau Cloud to enable live data connections, you can now publish your workbook to Tableau Cloud. From the Server menu, select Publish Workbook.

After choosing the workbook name and project that you wish to publish to, configure the deployment so that the CData ODBC driver for Okta is embedded in your workbook as a separate, live data source.

1. Under Data Sources, select the option to Edit the embedded data sources in the workbook.
2. Change Publish Type to 'Published separately,' then select a desired means of authentication.
3. Last, select 'Maintain connection to a live data source' and click the green Publish Workbook button.

The published workbook now updates alongside the underlying Okta data. From a published dashboard, simply click the Refresh button to reflect the most recent changes.