My writings about data analytics, web development & the cloud.
August 14, 2023 • Retool
Cascading filtering is a technique that enables users to interactively narrow down data based on multiple selection criteria. In combination with the new table component they can be easily implemented, offering a seamless experience when creating interactive applications with dynamic data filtering.
January 11, 2023 • Retool
Retool applications really come to live when you sprinkle in some JavaScript. The real magic behind a lot of your data manipulation and UI control is defined by how and where you write JavaScript. There are two ways to add business logic to your applications via JS: transformers & queries. In this blog post we will look at the differences between the two.
January 6, 2023 • Retool
Retool is the fastest way to build internal applications. In this blog post I am going to highlight ten of my favourite app-building tips that will make your life as a Retool developer a lot easier!
December 8, 2022 • Retool
Are you looking to connect Notion to Retool, but not sure where to start? In this blog post, I'll show you how to use the Notion API and set up a generic REST API connection in Retool to easily integrate these two powerful tools.
December 7, 2021 • DBT
dbt is a great tool for data transformation. All of your data pipelines and configurations are written in common file types such as SQL and YAML. There are also many third-party tools you can use and configure to schedule and automate your dbt runs. In this blog post, I explain how you can set this up via one of these solutions: Github Actions.
November 27, 2021 • Data Analytics
The data space is a super interesting area to be involved in. Some tools have been around for many years and have defined how we operate and work with data. However, lately we have seen some trends around tooling appear that are worth investigating. In this blog post, I will discuss three key trends that I think will define the future of the data landscape.
September 3, 2021 • TypeScript
A partial type is a small part of the TypeScript language, but this feature has solved some major annoyances and issues that I ran into while using types with the useState hook in React.
August 11, 2021 • Tableau
Since Tableau Server version 2021.2 you can deploy a Tableau Server on Linux in a Docker container. In this blog post I take a look at this new new process.
July 22, 2021 • JavaScript
With the data fetching strategies in Next.js you can turn almost any database into your own backend. In this blog post you will learn how I quickly and securely used Google Sheets as a CMS for a static site built with Next.js.
May 24, 2021 • Tableau
Lately, we've been getting more and more client requests and interest in using Tableau Online for embedding Tableau dashboards into custom applications. With the majority of tools and applications moving to a managed cloud-hosted service they would also like to do that with Tableau. Often we recommend a self-hosted Tableau Server as this gives the most flexibility and all server features. Let's take a look at how Tableau Online and Server differ and when Online might be a good solution for embedded analytics..
April 28, 2021 • AWS
I am working on a large Next.js project that uses Vercel for hosting and some of the backend is provided by AWS Amplify. I had to find a way to link specific Amplify environments to different Git branches and deployment branches on Vercel. This didn't seem as straightforward as expected.
April 6, 2021 • Docker
Docker is a great tool for creating, running and deploying your applications but it can all be a bit overwhelming. This blog post looks at some of the Docker concepts that should help you get started with this platform.
September 22, 2020 • Tableau
At The Information Lab, we have lots of Tableau users and customers that are interested in integrating the power of their interactive data visualisations with Salesforce. This has always been possible but it needed a little bit of coding wizardry to embed Tableau in a Salesforce page. Therefore this was not accessible for everyone. But this has changed! You can now use the easy to configure drag and drop Lightning Web Component (LWC) that Tableau has just released! Let's take a look at this new feature in this blog post.
September 1, 2020 • AWS
Efficiently and easily automating tasks and pieces of code is super important for those that want to stay productive. I'm a huge fan of scheduling my workloads so I don't need to look after tedious and repetitive tasks. Thanks to Amazon EventBridge (a.k.a. CloudWatch events) we can easily create rules for our Lambda functions and schedule them whenever we want.
August 30, 2020 • AWS
A few months ago I passed the AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam. This exam tests your knowledge of the core AWS services that you need to use for developing, deploying and debugging cloud based applications. In this blog post I give more background to the exam and give some tips & tricks on how you can pass!
August 25, 2020 • AWS
There are many ways to host your website on Amazon Web Services (AWS). One of the easiest is to use an S3 bucket to host your static website. In this video & blog I show you how easy it is to host a React application in this way.
August 18, 2020 • Docker
Have you ever had the problem where a tool or a piece of software works fine on your machine, but the moment you install it on someone else's you get all kinds of issues? Well, I have, and particularly for this reason Docker was invented! In this blog post we will take a quick look at what Docker is and how easy it is to run a database in a Docker container. This container will work on any machine. I promise. Along the way you also learn some Docker specific lingo.
August 5, 2020 • Tableau
In this video I explain how I built a Tableau Web Data Connector (WDC) that gets daily Covid data for The Netherlands. In the video you'll learn my approach to building a WDC and also how I deploy the application to Vercel.
May 12, 2020 • Tableau
In this blog post I describe how to automate data quality warnings on Tableau Server. These warnings can help inform your end users that there are problems with the underlying data. For this I'm using Tableau Webhooks, AWS Lambda Functions and the Tableau REST API.
Febuary 26, 2020 • Tableau
There are many ways of embedding a Tableau Dashboard into Salesforce. I recorded two videos that show how to do that. In the first one I'm showing the easy way with no coding involved. The second video uses a Visualforce page that integrates with a Tableau dashboard. Click on 'Read' to watch the videos.
Febuary 24, 2020 • JavaScript
Many APIs provide their data in several pages. In order to grab all of the data of these pages you have to make multiple API requests in a loop. In JavaScript there are multiple ways of writing such a loop. In this blog I take a look at the 'do... while' loop.
Febuary 21, 2020 • Alteryx
In late 2019 Tableau released the Metadata API. This is a new API that allows you to query assets and metadata about your Tableau systems. It allows you to track lineage, do impact analysis and find content on your server. In this second blog post I discuss how to query the GraphQL API and how to use Alteryx get get data out of the API is.
Febuary 20, 2020 • Tableau
In late 2019 Tableau released the Metadata API. This is a new API that allows you to query assets and metadata about your Tableau systems. It allows you to track lineage, do impact analysis and find content on your server. In this first blog post I discuss what this new API can do, how it works and what GraphQL is. In the second post I will explain how to use Alteryx to connect and query the API.
Febuary 9, 2020 • VS Code
I write all my blog posts in markdown in VS Code. That's because this website is built with Gatsby and this tool makes it extremely easy to create pages with it. What I don't like about writing markdown, especially for a Gatsby blog, is that I have to write frontmatter each time I start writing. A quick way of scaffolding out this frontmatter is by using a VS Code User snippet. Let's take a look at how to create such a snippet.
January 22, 2020 • Talks
In version 2019.4 Tableau released the ability to use webhooks in the platform. With webhooks you are able to integrate Tableau events in your own applications. An example could be a message in your Slack work space when a new workbook was published or a text message to your boss when an extract fails (options are endless). In this webinar my colleague Laine Caruzca and I went over how to configure these web hooks and how to use no-code solutions such as Zapier and IFTTT. Go to 'Read' to check out the recording!
January 1, 2020 • CSS
In the previous blog post I explained what TailwindCSS is. In this post we will install the framework and discuss the various ways you can actually install it. This might not be one of the most exciting blog post out there, but it's more of an exercise and a resource for myself.
December 31, 2019 • CSS
In 2020 I want to focus more on learning how to create effective designs and how to get better at designing user experiences. A really exciting framework that will help me with this is TailwindCSS. In the next few months, while I'm learning, I will write a few more blog posts about this CSS framework. In this first post I want to explain what TailwindCSS is.
December 8, 2019 • AWS
While studying for one of the AWS Exams I found a service called AWS Amplify. In this video I show you how easy it is to use this service to push a React application to a repository on Github and then have it automatically deploy on AWS.
November 20, 2019 • Talks
At the Alteryx Inspire Europe Conference in October 2019 I hosted a training session on how to web scrape and connect to APIs in Alteryx. I did a repeat of that session as a webinar two weeks later. I have now uploaded the recording of that webinar to my YouTube Channel. Go to 'Read' to check out the recording!
November 17, 2019 • Tableau
The final Tableau 2019 hackathon which took place on the 12th of November at the Tableau Conference was the last session organised by the Tableau Developer team in 2019. In this blog I give 5 Reasons why you should join the next Tableau Developer Hackathon.
November 1, 2019 • Tableau
Currently authentication of the REST API in Tableau is handled with personal login details. In order to authenticate you need to send your credentials, however in 2019.4 we also get the ability to use Personal Access Tokens. A new addition to the developer toolkit which means you don't need to expose your password!
October 27, 2019 • Tableau
Tableau version 2019.4 will see the introduction of webhooks in the Tableau platform. Webhooks allow you to connect Tableau to your apps. This means that an action in Tableau can trigger another app.
October 26, 2019 • Alteryx
In this blog post I will explain how you can integrate Alteryx with Slack. This integration means you can interact with your Alteryx Gallery from within your Slack environment. This example includes slash commands to find a list of workflows in your Gallery and the ability to execute a workflow with said slash command.
September 24, 2019 • Talks
On the 8th of March 2019 I gave a talk for the Tableau EMEA Fringe Festival about Tableau Extensions. In this talk I spoke about what Tableau Extensions are, why you should use them and how you can create them.
August 23, 2019 • Tableau
One of the first things you need to do when you start developing a Tableau Extension is to create a manifest file. Until now there was no quick way to quickly create this file. You had to go the the Tableau Github page and copy the contents of the sample file. However, after some quick dev-ing I created a CLI (command line interface) tool that you can use to rapidly scaffold such a file.
June 3, 2019 • Tableau
Tableau Public is a great platform for showcasing your data visualisations. Now you can also start analysing the data about all your visualisations with a new web data connector (WDC) that I created. With the Tableau Public WDC you will be able to get insight into the number of views, favourites and other information related to your published dashboards.
April 28, 2019 • JavaScript
Very often I get the question where should I start if I want to learn JavaScript? Besides recommending a few online courses I don't have much to fall back on. In the next few posts I have therefore collated all the resources that I have used (and still use) to learn JavaScript. We're starting with a list of YouTube channels that I follow.
April 27, 2019 • Talks
A few weeks ago I spoke at the first Virtual Tableau Developers User Group. Click Read More to check out the video.
March 15, 2019 • NodeJS
In this blog post I'm describing how to setup a task for running your node code on a particular schedule.
March 14, 2019 • JavaScript
ES6 (ECMAScript 2015) introduced a 'new' way of creating constructor functions and prototypes - classes. In this blog I explain how to create classes and why they're being used.
March 12, 2019 • JavaScript
ES6 (ECMAScript 2015) introduced two types of module exports - default and named exports. In this blog I explain the differences between the two.
January 4, 2019 • Tableau
Ever wanted to execute your Alteryx workflows or analytic apps from within your Tableau dashboard? Read how in this blog!
January 3, 2019 • D3.js
In this blog, I will describe how you can integrate D3 into Vue.js. I'm also introducing the Vue CLI and how to integrate D3 there.
October 15, 2018 • Tableau
In this blogpost I will walk you through building your first Tableau dashboard extension. It is aimed at those that have no prior experience with creating extensions.
August 7, 2018 • Tableau
With the release of Tableau’s latest instalment, version 2018.2, we now have the ability to use extensions in our dashboards. With extension we also see a new file extension appearing. Read all about it in this blog post!
August 6, 2018 • VueJS
In this blog post I'll explain how to use the Tableau JS API for embedding with Vue.js
December 12, 2017 • Alteryx
In this blog post, I will walk you through setting up an environment in which you utilise the Alteryx Gallery API in order to embed apps and workflows. You will find code snippets that should help you understand how to use the Gallery API endpoints.
October 21, 2017 • Alteryx
In this blog post I sketched out a checklist that you can follow when you want to deploy Alteryx workflows in an enterprise environment.
July 1, 2017 • Alteryx
How retracing and iterating backwards from your solution to your problem can be used within Alteryx
June 27, 2017 • Alteryx
December 9, 2016 • Tableau
How to Change a Discrete Field Label in Tableau
December 2, 2016 • Tableau
In this blog I will look at the 'Join Calculation', a new feature in Tableau 10.2.
November 23, 2016 • Python
In this blog I will go through the basics of the Document API, what you can do with it and we are going to create a Python script to extract information from a Tableau data source.
July 7, 2016 • Alteryx
Have you ever thought about extracting your calculations from your Tableau workbook? Maybe you want or need to document all your calculations so you can easily show your colleagues the logic behind your calculations. In this blog I will share an Alteryx workflow that I built to extract calculations from a Tableau workbook and I will explain why you should download this workflow.
May 15, 2016 • Tableau
Tooltips are often neglected and overseen in Tableau. Sometimes you see great dashboards which tell an amazing story but once you start hovering over marks you'll notice that the designer didn't pay any attention to the tooltips. In this blog post I'll give you some tips on how to format your tooltips.
March 2, 2016 • Tableau
In this blog I will run you through the basics of one element of text analysis, sentiment analysis, how to connect and install R, R Server and R packages. I will be using some Twitter data to illustrate the sentiment analysis in Tableau.
© 2025 Andre de Vries