Before loading your data into Tableau, you will have to prep it first. If you don't already have a data structure in which to store the data you retrieve, you'll have to create a schema for your data tables. Then, for each value in the response, you'll need to identify a predefined datatype (INTEGER, DATETIME, etc.) and build a table that can receive them. Hubsspot's documentation should tell you what fields are provided by each endpoint, along with their corresponding datatypes.Complicating things is the fact that the records retrieved from the source may not always be "flat" – some of the objects may actually be lists. In these cases you'll likely have to create additional tables to capture the unpredictable cardinality in each record.

HubSpot is a convenient platform as it provides you with a REST API so that you get several types of data from the platform. For example, in order to get a list of various blog topics, you could easily call GET /blogs/v5/topics. Keep in mind that all of the Hubspot's API calls need a parameter that often specifies an API Key or an OAuth Access Token, and some tend to provide optional parameters to let you easily tailor the information that the platform returns.

If you would like to analyze data in Tableau, you will have to convert it into a format that Tableau can read. You can import data from excel files or text files and PDFs, but the most suitable practice is to create a data warehouse that has all the data, and then to connect your data warehouse to Tableau. To import your data from an MS Excel file, click on "Microsoft Excel" present under the connect tab. This will open a new dialog box so that you can easily navigate to your Excel file in the machine from which you would like to import your data. Now, click on the file and then click ‘Open.’ In case there is more than one sheet in your MS Excel workbook, all of these workbooks will be automatically imported, and they would be listed as sheets on the left-hand side panel of Tableau. Once you have loaded your data, Tableau offers an option to locally cache your data to expedite queries. There are almost no restrictions on how you import any type of data into Tableau. Tableau has many options to represent data in various views, applying filters, formatting, drill-downs, creating sets, performing forecasting, and generating trend lines. If you have used Pivot Tables in MS Excel, then the Tableau report building process will feel quite familiar. You will have to select the columns and rows desired in the resulting data set, and the aggregate functions used in order to populate the data cells.

If you've made it this far, congrats! You probably have a written a program or script to extract your data and move it into Tableau. Now it's time to think about how you will keep this data up-to-date by loading updated or new data. Of course, you can just replicate all your data every time you have updated your records, but that would be extremely manual and time-consuming. Luckily there is a better way. The key is building your script so that it can sense incremental updates made to the data. Thankfully, HubSpot’s API results include fields so that you can identify those records which are new since the last update you made (or since the most recent record you have copied). Once you have taken new data into consideration, you can easily set your script either as a continuous loop or cron job to pull down new data as soon as it appears. And keep in mind that, as with most codes, once you write it, you will need to maintain it. In case HubSpot changes its API, or if the API sends a field containing a data type that your code does not recognize, you might have to change the script.

If all this sounds a bit overwhelming, don't worry -- there is an easier way to get this done! Thankfully, products like Improvado were developed to move data from HubSpot to Tableau automatically. Using Improvado, you can easily combine the most crucial and relevant data from your ad campaign into a dashboard. You can then connect this data to Tableau.