Creating PDF documents and exporting download links from the Tableau server

Chris Snow picture Chris Snow · Apr 23, 2014 · Viewed 12.6k times · Source

Is it possible to create PDF documents (e.g. on a nightly schedule) with Tableau and have those documents exposed by a URL by the Tableau server?

This sort of approach is common in the Jasper Reports and BIRT world, so I was wondering if the same approach is possible with Tableau?

I couldn't see any documentation on the Tableau site for creating PDFs, other than print to PDF

Answer

YABADABADOU picture YABADABADOU · Apr 24, 2014

With Tableau Server, you can access your published workbook in a pdf format with this URL: http://nameofyourtableauserver/views/NameOfYourWorkbook/NameOfYourView.pdf

Simply, the url is the url of your view + you add ".pdf".

The pdf file will be generated dynamically when accessing the URL.

Another option is to program your own script with tabcmd. You can have more info on tabcmd here: http://kb.tableausoftware.com/articles/knowledgebase/using-tabcmd