How Does It Work?

Use Tableau to power the analytics in by your apps, from analysis to visualization, insight generation and beyond. This article focuses on the high-level details of the integration to help you get started.

Common use cases for adding Tableau to an app (AKA embedded analytics) include:

• Tableau dashboards and charts as components of line-of-business or vertical applications
• Reporting to customers, shareholders, partners and regulatory entities
• Adding analytics to internal systems such as CRMs, ERPs and knowledge bases to support decision making
• Scaling consulting services able to work with private, third-party and public data sources
• Automated reporting with data that stays up to date and a quality user experience

Many of these scenarios result in data monetization and a brand that stands out amongst the competition, communicating expertise and technological know-how.

1. Analyze Your Data

To add analytics to your app, you start with Tableau Desktop (opens in a new tab) to connect to your data sources. This application empowers you to explore data like you've never experienced before! Analyzing data visually is at the core of Tableau's claim to fame.

To see Desktop in action there is no better place than Tableau Public (opens in a new tab) where you will find a community of data enthusiasts and professionals share amazingly creative content made possible by visual analysis.

To learn more, visit the article on Visual Analytics.

Some problems require additional tooling such as wrangling data into usable models with Tableau Prep Builder and leveraging the power of Tableau AI to track metrics, write calculations and create charts!

2. Publish Your Work

To share your work with others you need an environment to host the content and secure it so it is only accessible to the viewers you intend to share insights with. You have the choice between a SaaS environment managed by Tableau Cloud (opens in a new tab) or you can self-host an environment with Tableau Server (opens in a new tab).

Tableau Cloud is the easiest option as it does not require that your deploy a Server environment to get started. A Tableau Cloud site also provides all of the resources you would need to scale your analytics without requiring active management of the underlying hardware. In other words you can sign up and go!

3. Add Analytics to Your App

Now that your analytics is securely hosted on a Tableau environment, you can generate embed code or a share link from the content page to add it to your app. This relies on web technology such as JavaScript and HTML. If these languages are not your thing, don't worry! The "embed code" is what is a technology called "web component (opens in a new tab)" which means that you can copy and paste it unto your website or app as it is:

<script type="module" src="https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/tableau.embedding.3.latest.min.js"></script>
 
<tableau-viz id="tableauViz"
  src='https://public.tableau.com/views/superstore_embed/Profitability'
  toolbar="bottom"
  hide-tabs
  width="800"
  height="830"
>
</tableau-viz>

Notice how it imports the Tableau library via the <script> tag and adds a <tableau-viz> element configurable with attributes such as a URL for analytics as well as options for controlling the toolbar, tabs and sizing.

As a result, your website or app would have an embed that looks like this:

To learn more about embedding Tableau, see the article on architecture for the frontend.

For more technical guidance, checkout the documentation on the Embedding API (opens in a new tab) and the API reference (opens in a new tab).

For an interactive developer experience, go to Tableau's Embedding Playground (opens in a new tab) and use it as seen on this demo (opens in a new tab).

4. Additional Integrations

The act of embedding a dashboard or visualization into a webpage is quite simple. A well-engineered integration requires handling additional areas such as authentication, authorization, content management, and data security. Depending on your integration goals, you may require the use of a variety of features and techniques. Thankfully, Tableau provides a robust set of APIs to meet a variety of needs and adapts to the requirements of your project.

To learn about these subjects and more visit the Architecture section of this website.

Tableau's developer community or DataDev is found on the Developer Program (opens in a new tab). This program will give you access to a Slack group, tutorials and resources to learn about Tableau's wide-ranging developer offering.