Connecting Tableau to analytics data

Connect Tableau to your Tallyfy Analytics data

Connect Tableau to Tallyfy Analytics through Amazon Athena¹ in about 15 minutes. Once connected, you can build visual dashboards from your workflow data - process durations, task completion rates, form field answers, and member activity.

Requirements

• Tallyfy Analytics subscription activated for your organization
• Tableau Desktop installed
• Admin access to your computer (for driver installation)
• Access Key credentials from Tallyfy Support

Authentication overview

Tallyfy provisions two separate credential sets for Analytics:

Credential type	Use for
IAM Username/Password	AWS web console access only
Access Key + Secret Access Key	Tableau and other BI tool connections (recommended)

Use the right credentials

For Tableau, always use Access Key + Secret Access Key - not your IAM console login. Token-based authentication avoids “security token invalid” errors that happen with console credentials.

Setup process

Step 1 - Install required drivers

1. Download and install 64-bit Java from Java’s official site ↗. The JDBC connection requires it.
2. Download the Amazon Athena JDBC Driver from the AWS Athena JDBC documentation page ↗.
3. Place the downloaded driver in Tableau’s driver directory: C:\\Program Files\\Tableau\\Drivers on Windows or ~/Library/Tableau/Drivers on macOS.

Driver updates

AWS updates their JDBC drivers periodically. Check their documentation for the latest version to avoid compatibility issues.

Step 2 - Configure Tableau connection

1. Launch Tableau Desktop.
2. Click Connect > To a Server > Amazon Athena.
3. Enter the Server - use the Athena endpoint for your region (e.g., athena.us-east-1.amazonaws.com or athena.us-west-2.amazonaws.com). Tallyfy Support will confirm your region.
4. Enter the Port (443).
5. Enter the S3 Staging Directory provided by Tallyfy (e.g., s3://tallyfy-athena-results/). This is where Athena stores temporary query results.
6. Enter your Tallyfy-provided Access Key ID.
7. Enter your Tallyfy-provided Secret Access Key.
8. Enter the Region matching your server endpoint.
9. Click Sign In.

Step 3 - Access Tallyfy data

1. Select AwsDataCatalog from the Catalog dropdown.
2. Select your assigned database (typically your organization name) from the Database dropdown.
3. You’ll see available tables containing your workflow data.
4. Drag tables into your workspace to start building visualizations.

Working with Tallyfy data in Tableau

Available data

Tallyfy Analytics data includes detailed information across these areas:

• Process data - template names, process status, ownership, and completion progress
• Task data - assignments, due dates, completion timestamps, and task status per step
• Form field data - questions, answers, and field types collected during workflows
• Member data - user profiles, activity timestamps, roles, and login history

Each process run is exported as a denormalized dataset - meaning process, task, and form field details are combined into a single flat structure. This makes it straightforward to build dashboards without complex joins.

Visualization ideas

Here are the most common dashboards Tallyfy customers build:

1. Process duration charts - identify where workflows get stuck (durations show elapsed time, not effort)
2. User performance scorecards - task completion rates and average handling times
3. Form data trends - patterns in customer requests or quality submissions
4. Process status monitors - current state of active workflows

Interpreting time metrics

Duration and handling time metrics show elapsed calendar time between task assignment and completion. This includes weekends, holidays, and waiting periods. For actual effort tracking, see how to track time spent on tasks.

Video tutorial

This video walks through the complete setup:

Troubleshooting connection issues

If your connection fails, check these in order:

• Verify your Access Key and Secret Access Key are correct - a single wrong character breaks the connection
• Confirm the JDBC driver is in the correct folder (C:\\Program Files\\Tableau\\Drivers or ~/Library/Tableau/Drivers)
• Test network connectivity to the Athena endpoint - corporate firewalls sometimes block it
• Confirm your Tallyfy Analytics subscription is active
• Restart Tableau after installing drivers (required for Tableau to detect new drivers)

Still stuck? Contact Tallyfy Support with the exact error message.

Related articles

Analytics > Tableau

Tableau plugs directly into Tallyfy Analytics through Amazon Athena so teams can build interactive dashboards and spot workflow bottlenecks and track SLA compliance and analyze form data without writing code or depending on IT.

Powerbi > Connect Power BI

Tallyfy Analytics lets you connect Power BI to your workflow data through Amazon Athena using an ODBC driver in about 15 minutes and then build interactive dashboards from per-process Parquet files and member tables while using Access Key authentication (not IAM credentials) pointed at the us-west-2 region.

Looker > Connecting Looker to analytics data

Looker connects to Tallyfy’s workflow analytics data through Amazon Athena in about 15-20 minutes by installing a JDBC driver (for self-hosted instances) and configuring an Athena connection with AWS Access Key credentials to query Parquet-formatted process and task data stored in S3 and then build LookML models and dashboards for tracking process durations and team performance and SLA compliance.

Tableau > Troubleshoot issues

Tallyfy Analytics connections through Tableau can break due to wrong credential types or expired keys and this guide walks through diagnosing authentication errors and reconnecting data sources by using the correct Access Key/Secret Key pair and re-entering connection parameters like the S3 staging directory and region settings.

Footnotes

1. Amazon Athena is a serverless query service that lets BI tools run SQL queries directly against data stored in S3 ↩

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