After Installing the Connector you can connect and create a Data Source for data in Airtable.

Setting Up a Data Source

Complete the following steps to connect to the data:

1. Under Connect | To a Server, click More....
2. Select the data source called Airtable by CData.
3. Enter the information required for the connection.
4. Click Sign In.
5. If necessary, select a Database and Schema to discover what tables and views are available.

Using the Connection Builder

The connector makes the most common connection properties available directly in Tableau. However, it can be difficult to use if you need to use more advanced settings or need to troubleshoot connection issues. The connector includes a separate connection builder that allows you to create and test connections outside of Tableau.

There are two ways to access the connection builder:

• On Windows, use a shortcut called Connection Builder in the Start menu, under the CData Tableau Connector for Airtable folder.
• You can also start the connection builder by going to the driver install directory and running the .jar file in the lib directory.

In the connection builder, you can set values for connection properties and click Test Connection to validate that they work. You can also use the Copy to Clipboard button to save the connection string. This connection string can be given to the Connection String option included in the connector connection window in Tableau.

Connecting to Airtable

The connector requests tables and views from Airtable. Specify the following to connect.

• BaseId (optional): You can optionally specify either this property or BaseName to limit the shown tables and views to a particular base. Set this to your base ID.
  • To find this value, navigate to the Airtable API Reference and select a base. In the introduction section of the Airtable documentation for the selected base, note the value specified in The ID of this base is <Id>.
• BaseName (optional): You can optionally specify either this property or BaseId to limit the shown tables and views to a particular base. Set this to the name of the schema, which corresponds to the name of the Base in Airtable, that you want to use.

Authenticating to Airtable

You can authenticate to Airtable using either a Personal Access Token or OAuth PKCE.

Personal Access Token

First, generate a personal access token, if you have not done so already:

1. Log in to your user account.
2. Navigate to the token creation page.
3. Click Create new token.
4. Under Scopes, click Add a scope to add each of the following:
   • data.records:read
   • data.records:write
   • schema.bases:read
5. Under Access, add all the workspaces and bases that you want the token to have access to.
6. Click Create token to generate the token. Copy and save the generated token, as it will only be shown once.

Next, set the following:

• AuthScheme: Set this to PersonalAccessToken.
• OAuthAccessToken: Set this to the value of personal access token that you generated earlier.

OAuth PKCE

Set AuthScheme to OAuthPKCE.

Desktop Applications

CData provides an embedded OAuth application that simplifies OAuth desktop Authentication. Alternatively, you can create a custom OAuth application. See Creating a Custom OAuth App for information about creating custom applications and reasons for doing so.

Get and Refresh the OAuth Access Token

After setting the following, you are ready to connect:

• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
• OAuthClientId (custom applications only): Set this to the client Id assigned when you registered your app.
• OAuthClientSecret (custom applications only): Set this to the client secret assigned when you registered your app. Specifying this value is optional if a value was not generated during the OAuth custom application creation process.
• CallbackURL (custom application only): Set this to the redirect URI defined when you registered your app. For example: http://localhost:3333

When you connect, the connector opens Airtable's OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application. The connector then completes the OAuth process:

1. The connector obtains an access token from Airtable and uses it to request data.
2. The OAuth values are saved in the location specified in OAuthSettingsLocation, to be persisted across connections.

The connector refreshes the access token automatically when it expires.

Next Step

See Using the Connector to create data visualizations.