Hi everyone
I was exploring how to use Tableau for HR and payroll analytics, especially for UAE-based businesses.
I came across a UAE gratuity computation API that calculates end-of-service benefits based on salary and years of service.
Now I’m curious has anyone here tried connecting such external APIs (like HR or financial calculators) directly into Tableau dashboards?
I’m thinking about using it for visualizing total gratuity liability per department or employee group, but I’m not sure what’s the best way Web Data Connector or Tableau Prep script?
Would love to know how others here have handled API-based data visualization in Tableau .
Yes, this should be possible. The best approach depends on how often you need the gratuity data refreshed and whether the API supports the authentication method Tableau requires.
For a relatively small amount of data, you could retrieve the API response and transform the JSON into a Tableau-friendly format before loading it into the dashboard. Tableau Prep can be useful if you need to clean, structure, or combine the API data with employee or department information.
For recurring HR reporting, I would recommend keeping the API data in an intermediate database or structured data layer and letting Tableau connect to that source. This makes scheduled refreshes, auditing, and historical comparisons much easier.
You could then use Tableau to analyze total gratuity liability by department, employee group, tenure, or salary range.
