Connect Tableau to Claude Cowork
Give Claude Cowork governed access to Tableau’s 26 tools through Runlayer, with identity, policy, scanning, and audit on every call.
Set up
Add Tableau to Claude Cowork in four steps
Admins approve the server once. Everyone in Claude Cowork then gets it through the same governed connection.
- 1
Add Tableau to Runlayer
Tableau isn’t in the Runlayer catalog yet, so an admin adds it by its MCP server URL.
Adding a connector manually - 2
Connect Claude Cowork to Runlayer
Claude Cowork gets connector tools through the Runlayer Plugin. With direct tool listing turned on for your deployment, Tableau’s 26 tools show up in Claude Cowork’s own tool list.
Claude Cowork setup guide - 3
Sign in to Tableau
Sign in the way Tableau requires. Runlayer holds the credentials so they stay out of the client’s configuration.
- 4
Use Tableau from Claude Cowork
Tableau’s approved tools appear in Claude Cowork. Every call is checked against policy and recorded.
Tools
26 Tableau tools in Claude Cowork
Runlayer policy decides which of these Claude Cowork users can call.
Download workbook
Downloads workbook content as a TWB (application/xml) or TWBX (application/octet-stream) file.
Generate pulse insight brief
Generate a concise insight brief for Pulse Metrics using Tableau REST API.
Generate pulse metric value insight bundle
Generate an insight bundle for the current aggregated value for Pulse Metric using Tableau REST API.
Get custom view data
Retrieves comma-separated value (CSV) data for a Tableau Custom View (saved/personalized view state), including the user's filters.
Get custom view image
Retrieves an image of the specified custom view in a published viz.
Get datasource metadata
Retrieves metadata for a specified datasource by taking the basic, high level, metadata results from Tableau's VizQL Data Service and enriches them with additional context provided by Tableau's…
Get view
Retrieves information about the specified view, including upstream datasources, workbook information, project details, owner, tags, and usage statistics.
Get view data
Retrieves data for the specified view in a Tableau workbook, including the user's filters.
Control
What Runlayer can see and stop in Claude Cowork
Some controls apply to every client at the gateway. Others depend on what Claude Cowork exposes to Runlayer.
Gateway policy (available)
Every Tableau call from Claude Cowork passes through Runlayer, where your policies can allow, alert, mask, or block it.
Audit trail (available)
Each call is recorded with the user, Claude Cowork as the client, the tool, and the policy and scanner decisions.
Anthropic inference hooks (available)
Anthropic Inference hooks let Runlayer check Claude Cowork prompts before inference.
OTLP telemetry (available)
Claude Cowork can send supported OpenTelemetry events to Runlayer for observe-only session visibility.
Stop a call before it runs (available)
Runlayer can reject a Claude Cowork prompt before Anthropic runs it, which stops the whole request rather than one tool call.
Block output after it runs (available)
Because Runlayer checks the full prompt, tool results in it can be blocked before the model sees them.
Redact output in place (not available)
Runlayer cannot mask content in Claude Cowork. The gateway still applies policy to the call.
In Claude Cowork
- Cowork session data sent over OpenTelemetry is for monitoring only and cannot stop anything.
Frequently asked questions
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