"an Error Occurred While Communicating With The External Service" Upon Connecting To Rserve

Issue

When connecting to Rserve from Tableau Desktop, following error may occur:

An error occurred while communicating with the external service. Tableau is unable to connect to the service. Verify that the service is running and that you have access privileges.

Environment

Tableau Desktop
Tableau Prep Builder
Tableau Server
Rserve

Resolution

1. Enable Rserve to accept remote connections.

Option 1:

Enable remote connection via a configure file. Find details in Documentation for Rserve.

Option 2:

Start Rserve with the option "--RS-enable-remote". Rserve - Remote connection failed

2. Use a network tool like netstat to check and make sure Rserve accepts remote connections.
If Rserve accept remote connections, you will see Rserve listens 0.0.0.0:6311 in the result of netstat command.
* 6311 is the default port for Rserve. You can change the port anyway.

3. Make sure the firewall or proxy is not blocking Rserve port for access.