Embed Tableau in Other Applications
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe how you can embed Tableau content into other applications, such as Salesforce.
- Explain what embedded analytics is and why you would want to use it.
Embedded Analytics
To make it easier for more people to interact with data, you can embed Tableau views into internal knowledge bases, CRM systems, and business applications such as Salesforce and Microsoft SharePoint. Using the Embedding API, you can customize the dashboard interaction and user experience, including branding, colors, navigation, and content. You can integrate user management of Tableau Server, using the Tableau REST API, with the management of the embedding application. You can query Tableau Server metadata so that the correct information is displayed to the user.
Migrate Static Data Processes to Interactive Tableau
Main Stage Analytics often sends its customers Excel documents via email. These documents can contain confidential information like the customer’s sales results, profit, and margin. Main Stage Analytics is worried about security. Sometimes human error occurs and a spreadsheet is sent or forwarded to the wrong person. Also the spreadsheets don't give customers much insight on sales.
A major customer asks Main Stage Analytics for these improvements.
- It wants a way for its employees to interactively explore the data and get new insights, all from the customer’s internal company portal.
- It wants to automate the process and have the data automatically updated.
- It wants the views of the data to be filtered based on the role of the employee.
Jamie lets Jamal know that all that and more can be accomplished with Tableau using standard features. The plan is to embed a Tableau dashboard inside the customer portal and connect the Tableau report directly to the data source. With the Tableau REST API, Jamie’s team is able to quickly migrate the existing portal’s users to role-based groups of users of the site, and assign permissions to views for each group.
The customer is super delighted! When an employee views the portal, alongside other related information on the page, they see the data in a viz that is filtered by their role. They are able to see the data for a selected region with one click on a map, and filter the date range with a slider.
Create Your Own Mobile App with Tableau Vizzes
Speaking of portals, Main Stage Analytics wants to create its own external portal that customers can access from their mobile devices. It wants to embed Tableau visualizations, so customers can access all their information while on the road. Main Stage Analytics is planning to use the Mobile App Bootstrap for this new project. The Mobile App Bootstrap is a sample open-source mobile app that demonstrates how to embed Tableau content inside an app that runs on iOS and Android.
Embed Tableau Views in Salesforce
The sales team at Main Stage Analytics tracks all their sales and customer accounts in Salesforce. In meetings with the marketing team, Salome, a sales manager at Main Stage Analytics, notices all the cool visualizations and insights that they are getting with Tableau. Salome wonders if she can bring some of that magic into Salesforce. It would be great if the sales team could track how the marketing initiatives are helping to drive interest and sales in Main Stage Analytics.
Salome is happy to learn that Tableau views can be embedded in websites and applications. Salome meets with Jamie and enlists their help. Together, they soon discover that there is a Salesforce Lightning web component that does exactly what they need. Using the Tableau Viz Lightning web component, Salome and Jamie are able to embed Tableau views into the related sales record pages, and have them automatically filtered to the relevant data. Salome shows the work to Florentina Pérez, Main Stage Analytics' VP of Business Intelligence, who is really impressed and excited about the possibilities. Florentina gives them the green light to investigate more ways that Main Stage Analytics can integrate Salesforce data and Tableau visualizations.