In this guide, we’ll walk you through integrating cloud sheets with Tableau’s data analytics application to model and analyze your Orca Scan data in real-time.
To get started install Tableau Desktop or sign up for Tableau Online.
The main difference between the two is that Tableau Online is fully cloud-based and lets you publish and share dashboards with anyone, anywhere.
Start by logging in to your Orca Scan account, select the sheet that you want to connect to Tableau and open the Integrations settings.
Now “Allow public URL access” and copy the Live Data URL to your clipboard. We’ll use this URL to query Orca Scan data in real-time.
As an additional confirmation check, you must save the integration changes.
Now, let’s head over to Google Sheets…
Place the cursor in the A1 cell and add the =IMPORTDATA formula to the first cell of your sheet.
Now add the export link from Orca Scan within the brackets =IMPORTDATA(“replace-with-your-orca-sheet-url-here.csv”) - be sure to include the quotation marks!
We can now add the Google Sheet as a connector in Tableau.
If you’re using Tableau Online, it will be called Google Drive.
Once authorized, all your Google Sheets will surface. Pick the one that you have connected Orca Scan to and click “Connect”.
Once connected, the columns from Orca Scan surface as Dimensions and Measures in the left-side data pane.
One thing noticeably great about Tableau is the drag and drop interface that we can use for both analyzing and visualizing the data.
To learn more about what you can do with Tableau, check out the Tableau training videos.
Google sheets will pull data from Orca Scan once every 60 minutes. Tableau will automatically update the data but you can also trigger it with the Refresh option yourself.
You can configure the data that you sent to Google Sheets and that ends up in Tableau. You do this by appending parameters to the URL, for example:
URL parameter | Function |
---|---|
transactions=true |
Including audit trail |
timezone=-03:00 |
Changing time zone |
datetimeformat=DD/MM/YYYY |
Changing date format |
deltas=true |
Including deltas for numeric columns |
sortby=barcode&sortorder=desc |
Sort output by column |
Need help getting Orca Scan working with your software?