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Installation

This section will take you through the process of setting up your environment to use one of the sample dashboard or viz extensions. Using one of the sample extensions is a great way to learn and great way to get started developing your own extensions. In this section, you will start a simple web server on your computer to host the samples. You can use the same process for hosting the extension when you start developing your own.

info

What's in a Tableau extension? A Tableau extension consists of an XML manifest file (.trex), an web page (.html) that uses a Tableau-provided JavaScript library, and the JavaScript file (.js) (or files) that contain your extension logic. The Tableau dashboard and viz extensions are supported on Tableau Server, Tableau Cloud, and Tableau Desktop.

What you need to get started​

If you want to create an extension or work with the sample code, make sure you have the following dependencies installed:

You need Node.js and npm to run the viz and dashboard extension demos. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime. npm is a package manager for Node.js and is installed when you install Node.js.

Get the Tableau Extensions API SDK​

You can get the Tableau Extensions API SDK in two ways. Clone the repository if you want to contribute to the open source project or keep current with the latest changes. Download the .zip file if you want to view the samples and work on your own.

  • Open a terminal in the directory where you want to copy the Tableau Extensions SDK. Then run the following command to clone the Tableau Extensions API git repository:

HTTPS

git clone https://github.com/tableau/extensions-api.git

Requirements for using extensions in Tableau​

To use Tableau dashboard and viz extensions in Tableau, you need one of the following versions of Tableau.

For dashboard extensions:

  • Tableau Desktop 2018.2 and later
  • Tableau Server 2018.2 and later
  • Tableau Cloud

For viz extensions:

  • Tableau Desktop 2024.1 and later
  • Tableau Server 2024.1 and later
  • Tableau Cloud

Security requirements​

To run extensions on Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud, support for extensions must be enabled, and depending upon the extension and the data access it requires, the extension might need to be added to the safe list for the site. See Manage Dashboard Extensions on Tableau Server or Manage Dashboard Extensions on Tableau Cloud for more information.