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Setting up and running Tableau MCP with Claude

Tableau MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets you integrate large language models directly into Tableau. I am looking to use Claude to assist me as an AI QA engineer to check the work of report builders.

With MCP, Tableau can pass structured context, metadata, and query details to a large language model, allowing Claude to analyze workbook structure, calculations, filters, data sources, and performance patterns.

Tableau MCP Connectivity from Claude – Nov 2025 Update

Claude has added a native Tableau extension that simplifies the MCP integration with Tableau Cloud.

To access this extension, Open Claude desktop, navigate to settings

Select “Extensions”, to access desktop extensions

Select Tableau.

Acquire your PAT (personal access token) from Tableau. Note that some enterprises prohibit PAT for non-administrative roles.

Acquire a Tableau PAT

  1. Log in to Tableau Server and click My Account Settings
  1. Under Personal Access Tokens, enter a descriptive name for your token in the Token Name field, and then click Create Token.
  2. In the Personal Access Token dialog box, click the Copy Secret button.

What Features Can you access from Tableau with MCP?

There are lots of features to manage and understand data from Tableau via MCP. From querying data sources directly, viewing pulse metrics, documenting your workbooks, or administering workbooks. Here is a current list updated Nov 2025:

  • Get Datasource Metadata
  • List Datasources
  • Query Datasource
  • List All Pulse Metric Definitions
  • List Pulse Metric Definitions from Metric Definition IDs
  • List Pulse Metrics from Metric Definition ID
  • List Pulse Metrics from Metric IDs
  • List Pulse Metric Subscriptions for Current User
  • Generate Pulse Metric Value Insight Bundle
  • Get Workbook
  • Get View Data
  • Get View Image
  • List Workbooks
  • List Views
  • Search Content

Known Issues Nov 2025

When you try to use the extension, it does not work as well as a connection / MCP integration. My results using a configured MCP connection work significantly better than using the Claud local extension.

Set up Tableau MCP on your Desktop

The following instructions are for setting up your own Tableau MCP server on your desktop:

Visit https://github.com/tableau/tableau-mcp

Install GIT on your machine, so you can run bash scripts.

cd C:\<<YOUR_PATH>>
git clone https://github.com/tableau/tableau-mcp.git
cd tableau-mcp

Install and build your environment

npm install
npm run build

Obtain your Personal Access Token from Tableau

Open a file called “config.stdio.json”. It should look like the following:

Copy this file and save as “config.json”

Obtain your server name, site name, PAT_NAME and PAT_VALUE.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tableau": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["build/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "SERVER": "https://yourtableauserver.online.tableau.com",
        "SITE_NAME": "",
        "PAT_NAME": "",
        "PAT_VALUE": "",
        "DATASOURCE_CREDENTIALS": "",
        "DEFAULT_LOG_LEVEL": "debug",
        "INCLUDE_TOOLS": "",
        "EXCLUDE_TOOLS": "",
        "MAX_RESULT_LIMIT": "",
        "DISABLE_QUERY_DATASOURCE_FILTER_VALIDATION": ""
      }
    }
  }
}

Test to confirm a successful connection

npm run inspect

The key data point you need is at the bottom. Take that URL and the port number and paste into your browser

This MCP server has its own inspector framework to test and explore your MCP. This article is for setup and configuration of Claude on Tableau MCP, but we will dig deeper into MCP Inspector in the future.

Open Claude

Open File > Developer

Click “Open Convig”

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tableau": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["C:\\Users\\RyanGoodman\\code\\tableau-mcp\\build\\index.js"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "SERVER": "your-tableau-server-url",
        "SITE_NAME": "your-site-name",
        "PAT_NAME": "your-pat-name",
        "PAT_VALUE": "your-pat-value",
        "DEFAULT_LOG_LEVEL": "debug"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude

e File > Settings

Go back to the Developer tab