We recently put SAP Analytics Hub to the test, integrating a Tableau Server appliance hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). SAP Analytics Hub is a cloud-based portal that allows analytics from multiple BI platforms to be easily accessed from an easy-to-use interface. In addition to hosting analytics from the SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform and SAP Analytics Cloud, I’ll demonstrate how easy it is to integrate with a third-party analytics portal such as Tableau Server.
For this investigation, I installed Tableau Desktop 10.3.3 onto the Tableau Server 10.3 AWS appliance and created a simple Tableau dashboard using AWS-hosted SAP HANA as its data source.
Next, I published the dashboard to Tableau Server.
The workbook was published to a project named EV Technologies.
The workbook, including its connectivity to SAP HANA, is now visible from Tableau Server.
Choosing the EV Technologies project, the Tableau + HANA workbook is visible.
Clicking the workbook loads the dashboard and its live data into the browser.
Notice that the browser URL points directly to the Tableau Workbook and is almost human-readable.
Now that the Tableau workbook has been created and published to Tableau Server, it should be configured in SAP Analytics Hub as an asset.
The asset is appropriately named My First Tableau Asset.
The Asset contains three links- a link to the Tableau Server dashboard as well as links to the Tableau and EV Technologies web sites.
Clicking on the dashboard button will load the destination URL in a new browser tab; however, the Tableau user is unauthenticated. The Tableau Server login screen appears. Notice that the URL nearly human readable, https://[tableau appliance].compute.amazonaws.com/#/views/TableauHANA/TableauHANA?:iid=1
The Tableau workbook appears once the user is authenticated. The SAP HANA data is refreshed immediately once the workbook is opened.
The chief limitation of our evaluation was the lack of a user identity management system such as Microsoft Active Directory to demonstrate single-sign-on (SSO) to Tableau Server, which would have provided a more direct engagement with the third-party Tableau content. If you have Tableau Server in your enterprise, you’ll be able to create seamless (and invisible) authentication between your Active Directory, SAP Analytics Hub, and Tableau Server.
This was our first experience integrating third-party visualization tools into SAP Analytics Hub but it won’t be our last. Stay tuned for the next installment.
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