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Pull request overview
Adds a new “Getting Started” docs section aimed at non-developers to help them set up and use the Tableau MCP Server (primarily via Claude Desktop), as part of issue #248’s push toward more guide-oriented documentation.
Changes:
- Introduces a new
docs/docs/getting-startedsection with a comprehensive walkthrough and supporting screenshots. - Adds a Docusaurus category entry for “Getting Started” in the docs sidebar.
- Refactors
node-sea.mdto remove the old quick-start content and focus it on Node.js SEA deployment instructions (plus a relative-link fix).
Reviewed changes
Copilot reviewed 3 out of 15 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.
Show a summary per file
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| docs/docs/getting-started/README.md | New end-to-end Getting Started guide including setup, usage examples, and troubleshooting. |
| docs/docs/getting-started/category.json | Adds “Getting Started” as a positioned docs category in the sidebar. |
| docs/docs/getting-started/images/pat.png | Adds screenshot used in PAT creation instructions. |
| docs/docs/getting-started/images/list-datasources-trace.png | Adds screenshot used to explain tool-call tracing in Claude. |
| docs/docs/extras/node-sea.md | Removes old quick start section, adjusts headings, and fixes env-vars link path. |
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anyoung-tableau
changed the title
Co-authored-by: Copilot <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
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| # Getting Started | |||
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| This document walks through getting started with the new Tableau MCP server, enabling you to bring | |||
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This part could come off as a little salesy / launch-y, and “new” will stale quickly. Is our intent here to sound more like a product announcement, or more like the rest of the docs?
I’d lean toward something tighter and more timeless, e.g. “This guide walks through the simplest end-user path for using Tableau MCP with Claude Desktop.”
| Tableau data into AI tools like Claude for analysis and asking questions of your data. This process | ||
| works equally well with published datasources located on either Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server. | ||
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| This guide builds on the MCP project documentation, but is focused more for a general audience |
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The intent is good, but the phrasing is a little awkward.
Could we tighten this to something like: “This guide is written for a general audience and focuses on the simplest end-user path rather than the full developer configuration surface”?
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| [Model Context Protocol](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction) (MCP) is a relatively new | ||
| standard that makes it simpler for agents and AI-apps to interact with external software. It's an | ||
| exciting development that reduces the overhead in making agents more powerful and useful, especially |
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This section feels a bit too broad / zeitgeisty for a getting-started page. Are we trying to orient the reader, or persuade them that MCP matters?
If it’s the former, I’d cut this down pretty aggressively and keep it task-oriented. Right now it risks reading more like a keynote setup than docs.
| [Claude](https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/11175166-about-custom-integrations-using-remote-mcp#h_0f43251470) | ||
| are using it as the basis for 3rd-party connectors and integrations. | ||
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| In June 2025, Tableau released v1 of the |
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This is another sentence that will age quickly. Is the release timing important to the reader getting started, or can we make this timeless?
Something like “Tableau MCP is an open source project that lets AI tools explore Tableau data via VizQL Data Service and the Metadata API” feels more durable.
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| ### Basic Architecture | ||
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| The MCP Server is not strictly speaking a "server", but instead it runs locally on your computer. |
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I’d rethink this wording. It’s true for the local Claude Desktop path in this guide, but not true for the project in general since we also support HTTP / remote deployment.
Could we scope this more precisely to the guide, e.g. “In this guide, Tableau MCP runs locally on your computer as a separate process that Claude Desktop talks to”?
| Login to your site, then click your profile in the upper right to bring up My Account Settings. | ||
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| Scroll down to Personal Access Tokens and create a new one. You can use any token name but "mcp" is | ||
| suggested. Make sure to copy and save the value because it's only shown this one time. (Also, be |
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Minor, but this might be a good place to explain why we suggest a predictable name.
Otherwise it reads a little arbitrary. Even one short phrase like “to make it easier to recognize later in account settings” would help
| ### Install Tableau MCP Extension | ||
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| Tableau MCP can be built and run several different ways. Perhaps the easiest is running the | ||
| pre-built Claude Desktop Extension. |
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Intentionally Claude-first? If not, this is the place where we should probably acknowledge alternate paths.
Right now we removed the old generic quick start and Docker/SEA entry points from the main getting-started flow. Is that intentional?
If yes, I’d make the Claude-first framing explicit; if no, I’d add a short “Prefer another setup?” callout here
Part of #248
We don't have a way to preview doc changes so if you'd like to see it in action:
npm run docs:start