Automatically bringing TBA data into Tableau workbook

[Robert_Shield]

Hello all -
I was wondering if anyone has figured out a way to automatically bring TBA data into a tableau workbook (i.e in real time).
In past years, I’ve gone from TBA -> google sheet -> manual download and import, but that seems clunky at events, as you can go several matches between syncs to TBA.
My little bit of searching seems to indicate that we would need a Web Data Connector, but I have no idea how I would go about creating that, and I’d imagine that’d be something the TBA team would have to support.
Does anyone know if the BigQuery file updates in real time? That could be an acceptable solution if it does.

TIA
-Robert

[Zach_O]

Sorry for the late reply - I wanna make sure some of these points get touched on.

TBA’s BigQuery gets updated once a week on Mondays at 3am PST.

I’m not very familiar with Tableau, so I can’t offer any specific advice about how to interface with TBA.

[ldsedam]

I am not sure about the technical side of how TBA works, but whatever option you choose you need to be worried about maintaining an internet connection. I know in Michigan, some districts and even the FiM Championship have little to no internet anywhere near the field. In years my team has depended on internet connection to download or upload data, we have had to walk out of the field or even outside of the building to get internet.

[D_Price]

Check out this thread:

I am using Google Sheets and pulling data from TBA using the JSON script. Let me know if this helps. You will need to be connected to the internet via 4G or such so it may not work on the tablets unless they have their own network connection.

The Blue Alliance API Google Sheets Addon

Hello, The last two years 4944 has been using Google Sheets to run our scouting system. We’ve had our scouters using google forms for both pit scouting, and match scouting, which provides live updating data to our strategy team for match prep. We’ve also developed a system for including The Blue Alliance API data inside of our “Scouting App”. I figure I’d share our code in the hopes that it’ll help other teams who are using Google Sheets. What we’ve developed is simply a google script file you…

[Robert_Shield]

I’ve never had issues getting onto the internet at events when I needed to. USB tethering a laptop to a mobile device has been simple enough (either in the stands, or just outside the venue), and the scouting systems I work with are all designed to be completely offline-functional, although incorporating data from the internet is a desirable feature.

[ldsedam]

We used to use scouting methods that required us to have internet to upload so we would have a couple people walk outside the venue and upload all of our data every couple matches. Instead we now just tether to a computer and get all the data that way instead. This keeps us from requiring internet connection if there isn’t one.