What is Embedded BI

When people talk about Embedded Business Intelligence (BI) they are usually referring to putting things such as interactive dashboards and/or analytics within another business application. If that other business application is web based, and is customizable, then you might be able to achieve some of this yourself.

It seems that the popularity of data journalism and organisations want to publish data is increasing. Or maybe it’s just my perspective.

A sample of options

I’ve recently explored the use of multiple different BI tools and what capability they have to embed their content in a website. I’ll run through the few I’ve looked into, specifically the ones which you can use for free.

Tableau

Tableau was my first choice as it is a product I had used before. It has a free tier and is nice enough to allow you to publish content and embed it on other sites. You can sign up for an account here https://public.tableau.com/s/

You will need to download the free Tableau Public Desktop application to develop you first dashboard and publish it to your Tableau public profile. Once you do, the Tableau public dashboard will have a share icon which will provide you with the embed code. It might look something like this:

 <!-- Start Tableau Embed --> 
  <section class="brands-area">
    <div class="container">
      <div class='tableauPlaceholder' id='vizSOMEID' style='position: relative'>
        <noscript>
          <a href='#'>
            <img alt=' ' src='https://public.tableau.com/static/images/nh/YOURDASHBOARDNAME/Dashboard1/1_rss.png' style='border: none' />
          </a>
        </noscript>
        <object class='tableauViz' style='display:none;'>
          <param name='host_url' value='https%3A%2F%2Fpublic.tableau.com%2F' />
          <param name='embed_code_version' value='3' />
          <param name='site_root' value='' />
          <param name='name' value='YOURDASHBOARDNAME/Dashboard1' />
          <param name='tabs' value='no' />
          <param name='toolbar' value='yes' />
          <param name='static_image' value='https://public.tableau.com/static/images/nh/YOURDASHBOARDNAME/Dashboard1/1.png' />
          <param name='animate_transition' value='yes' />
          <param name='display_static_image' value='yes' />
          <param name='display_spinner' value='yes' />
          <param name='display_overlay' value='yes' />
          <param name='display_count' value='yes' />
          <param name='language' value='en' />
        </object>
      </div>
    </div>
  </section>
  <!-- End Tableau Embed -->

You also get a script tag that you need to include in your site as well.

Or you can directly embed with an iframe:

<div class="container">
  <iframe src="https://public.tableau.com/views/YOURDASHBOARDNAME/YOURDASHBOARDNAME?:showVizHome=no&:embed=true" width="1000" height="625"></iframe>
</div>

Power BI

Power BI was the other option that I thought would be a good one to demo. It has a free tier, but it isn’t made as easily accessible. You can sign up for an account here https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/get-started/, but you’ll need a corporate work email address (Gmail, Outlook etc won’t cut it).

You’ll also need to download the Power BI desktop application, I’d recommend getting this from the Microsoft Store (if you’re using a Windows computer).

Use Power BI desktop application to develop a quick dashboard and publish it to the Power BI service (that is https://powerbi.com).

There are a few administration hoops to jump through, but once you do, you can get the embed code from your dashboard in the Power BI service by doing the following:

It may look something like this:

<!-- Start Power BI Embed -->
<section class="brands-area">
<div class="container">
<iframe 
    width="1000" 
    height="625" 
    src="https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=YOURAPPID" 
    frameborder="0" 
    allowFullScreen="true">
</iframe>
</div>
</section>
<!-- End Power BI Embed-->

Other products that get a mention

• Yellowfin
• Qlik Sense
• SAS Visual Analytics
• Looker

I should also mention, that there are also a lot of open source and paid javascript charting and graphing frameworks that could be used to achieve the same thing.

Wrapping it up, it’s never been a better time to embed charts, dashboards and/or analytics into your business application or site.