Hi! I’m trying to embed a Tableau Cloud dashboard in Salesforce so that users can view the dashboard without having to authenticate separately with Tableau.
From what I understand, using Tableau Embedding + Tableau View requires SSO configuration with a dedicated user account, which I don’t currently have available.
Is there a way to configure authentication using an external application or Tableau Connected App so that users can access the embedded Tableau dashboard without having to reauthenticate with Tableau Cloud?
Any guidance on the recommended approach would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
#CRM Analytics #Tableau Cloud #Salesforce Admin #Analytics
Hi Kathy,
You can skip the second Tableau login, but each person still needs their own Tableau Cloud user. A connected app takes away the password prompt. It doesn't give you a free anonymous view.
The dedicated-user setup you mentioned is the older Tableau View path. Everyone comes in as that one account, so you get another login or a stored credential, and you lose who can see what. I wouldn't start there.
What you're describing is a Tableau Connected App with direct trust. An app you control signs a short-lived JWT with the connected app secret, and the subject is that person's Tableau username, usually their email. The embed passes the token in, Tableau Cloud trusts it, and they don't see another login screen. That's the external-application route in Tableau's embedding docs.
Salesforce won't mint that JWT from the standard viz component by itself. You still need a small token service, or whatever host is doing the embed, to sign it. Once that handshake exists, the Tableau Visualization Lightning web component can show the view. The other supported route is a shared identity provider, SAML or OpenID Connect, with Salesforce and Tableau Cloud both trusting it and the emails matching.
Give each Salesforce user a Tableau site role that can view the workbook. The connected app won't create those users for you, and a single shared embed account gets messy for licensing and for the audit trail.
Tableau documents this under Configure Connected Apps with Direct Trust and the Embedding API auth notes. On our side, the viz component is covered in Embed Tableau Dashboards in Salesforce.
