How to Embed Tableau into Webpages without Permission Restrictions

More and more publications are incorporating live dashboards into their stories. We’ve seen the power of data storytelling with live data (especially during this COVID-19 period) — stories enriched with more context, readers are more engaging and will repetitively return to the site to check on the auto-updating dashboard.

Tableau, which many companies use as the visualization tool, hasn’t made it easy for users to do that. The person accessing the view must also have an account on Tableau Server or Tableau Online to be able to even view the dashboard. So unless each one of your web visitors has a Tableau viewer license, it’s impossible to embed Tableau dashboard into your web content without some people not being able to view it.

But…there’s a trick! Steps below.

Step 1: Create a Tableau Public profile

Step 2: Save dashboard to Tableau Public.

In Tableau, Click Sever>>Tableau Public>>Save dashboard to Tableau Public (log in using the Tableau Public profile you just created).

Embed Tableau into Webpages without Permission Restrictions

Step 3: Hide the dashboard in Tableau Public

In your Tableau Public profile, toggle the visibility to not visible so this dashboard is exclusively visible only on the webpage you embed it in.

Step 4: Prevent users from downloading the dashboard and hide your Tableau Public profile info.

Click view >> scroll down and click edit details >> uncheck ‘allow others to download or explore and copy this workbook and its data’ & uncheck ‘show author profile link’.

Step 5: Embed the dashboard

Click on the Share (three-dotted) button at the bottom right corner of your viz and you will see a window pop up with the embed code and link to the dashboard.

Depends on your website, you can either directly use the embed code (javascript) or use an iframe.