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Tableau - Reasons to embed Tableau dashboards in websites

Reasons for embedding Tableau views in websites.
Primary reasons and request to embed Tableau Views into websites

1. Tableau Server is a single node environment and its worth to mention that overloading Tableau server as a web server itself on Tableau server can defeat the purpose of Tableau Server.
2. Tableau Server uses a Active Directory (AD) authentication and authorization, however worth to mention that Tableau imports the Groups and members from AD. Not all AD groups and members are in the Tableau unless you requested to add access to your projects.
3. The purpose of Tableau self service is  to implement service such as project and/or content owners can creates views and manage their own including access management.

This can be achieved depending upon scenarios requirement either with Tableau - "Guest" User Account for public pages or Tableau service account for authenticated pages.


Views published to the Tableau Server and then embed Views within a web page -- AITS has created a web service to simplify this feature with service account. Embedded views from the Tableau Server using a service account do not require individual authentication from the Tableau Server in order to display the views.

There are three scenarios where this is extremely beneficial. First if you wish to make a dashboard available for public viewing. It can be displayed with no authentication required.

The second scenario is if you wish to make a dashboard secure, but available to a very large group (e.g. all employees on a campus or to the university). The Tableau Server uses Active Directory to authenticate users and must synchronize with the Active Directory to update the membership of groups used to grant access. Large groups take a while to synchronize and many large groups would prevent the update process to complete overnight. For this reason it is recommended to embed the dashboard in a website which has campus credential authentication (i.e. Shibboleth). The viewer must authenticate with their University of Illinois credentials and then they can view the dashboard.

The third scenario is if you wish to make the dashboard secure and available to individuals who are not a part of the University of Illinois. Some examples may be an organization available to subscribers, a board of directors or colleagues from another institution. In this scenario, an authorization system is used to authenticate the users before displaying the web site.

In all of these scenarios, the following steps may be used to embed a dashboard in a web page.

  1. The dashboard (Tableau Workbook) must be published to the Tableau Server. The data must be available without requiring a data source password prompt (i.e. embedded account and password).
  2. The service account must be granted viewer access to the dashboard.
    1. To use the default service account, add the account UOFI\tableau-webviewer to your Active Directory viewer group assigned to your project.
    2. If you wish to use your own service account, contact AITS to coordinate the account setup. The request may be submitted to servicedeskaits@uillinois.edu. Please state that you wish to use a service account with the Tableau Server and the request will be routed to the appropriate group.
    3. Group memberships are synchronized overnight, so please allow time for the access to be updated on the Tableau Server.
  3. In your web page, you will need to insert an iframe statement. Instructions for doing this may be found at How to embed Tableau dashboards in websites.


KeywordsAITS, tableau, embed websites   Doc ID60566
OwnerMichael W.GroupUniversity of Illinois System
Created2016-02-09 09:57:48Updated2022-06-18 14:04:22
SitesUniversity of Illinois System
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