An error occurred communicating with the server (403) in Tableau.

Follow the below steps to prevent the network error in Tableau server:

“An error occurred communicating with the server (403). This may be a temporary network condition. Please retry the operation if this condition persists, contact your system administrator.”

This issue can occur if trusted authentication has been set up for Tableau Server. Beginning with version 8, security enhancements have been made to help protect your data from unauthorized access and other vulnerabilities. One of these enhancements includes added protection against tampering with VizQL sessions, which contain the sensitive data displayed in your view. Depending on your environment, you may not need this added level of protection. This may be true for environments where Tableau Server has been configured to use trusted authentication. In cases like this, as a Tableau Server administrator, you can disable this added security level to help resolve the above error.

Step 1

Click the Start button.

Step 2

In the search box, type Command Prompt. In the list of results, right-click Command Prompt, and click Run as administrator. 

Step 3

In the Command Prompt dialog box, change folders to the “bin” folder in the Tableau Server directory. For example, type one of the following commands depending on your machine:

• For a 32-bit machine: cd “c:\Program Files\Tableau\Tableau Server\[version]\bin”
• For a 64-bit machine: cd “c:\Program Files (x86)\Tableau\Tableau Server\[version]\bin”

Note: Replace [version] with the version of Tableau Server running on your machine.

Step 4

Type the following commands:  

1. tabadmin stop
2. tabadmin set vizqlserver.protect_sessions false
3. tabadmin configure
4. tabadmin start

Alternate Search Terms: trusted auth, 403, error