How to Visualize an Airtable Database in Tableau

Introduction

Anyquery lets you query and transform data from various sources including Airtable. Tableau is a powerful data visualization tool that can connect to many data sources, including MySQL. This tutorial will guide you on how to visualize data from an Airtable database in Tableau using Anyquery.

Before we start, a brief reminder: Anyquery is a SQL query engine that allows you to run SQL queries on various data sources. You must have Anyquery installed on your system. Refer to the installation guide for details.

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have the following:

Step 1: Install the Airtable Plugin in Anyquery

First, install the Airtable plugin for Anyquery:

anyquery install airtable

Next, follow the prompts to configure the plugin:

  1. Airtable API Key: Go to the Airtable tokens page and create a new token with the required scopes (e.g., data.records:read, schema.bases:read). Copy the token.
  2. Airtable Base ID: Open your Airtable base, and copy the string after https://airtable.com/app and before the / (e.g. appWx9fD5JzAB4TIO).
  3. Airtable Table Name: Enter the name of the table you want to visualize.

Once configured, you can verify the connection by running:

anyquery -q "SELECT * FROM airtable_table LIMIT 1"

Step 2: Start the Anyquery Server

Start the Anyquery server:

anyquery server

Because Tableau is a desktop application, you can connect directly to the local Anyquery server without additional steps.

Step 3: Install the MySQL Connector for Tableau

Before connecting Tableau to Anyquery, ensure you have the MySQL connector installed. Follow the installation instructions for MySQL connector.

Step 4: Connect Tableau to Anyquery

  1. Open Tableau Desktop.
  2. In the Connect pane on the left side, select MySQL under the To a Server section.
  3. Fill in the connection details:
    • Server: 127.0.0.1
    • Port: 8070
    • Username: Leave it empty unless you have set an auth-file.
    • Password: Leave it empty unless you have set an auth-file.
    • Database: main

Tableau Connection

  1. Click the Sign In button to verify the connection.

Step 5: Create Your First Visualization

  1. On the left sidebar, you will see the list of tables. Drag and drop your Airtable table (e.g., airtable_table) to the canvas.
  2. Fill in the columns and rows to create your visualization.

For example, here is a breakdown of tasks by status:

Tableau Visualization

Conclusion

You have successfully connected Tableau to Anyquery and visualized your Airtable database. Now you can create interactive dashboards and share them with your team.

For more details on using Anyquery with Tableau, refer to the Tableau plugin documentation. For more details on using the Airtable plugin, refer to the Airtable plugin documentation.