Embedding Amazon QuickSight Dashboards into Salesforce | Amazon VGT2 Las Vegas

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In January 2023, this article underwent a review and update for precision. Amazon QuickSight is a rapid, cloud-based business intelligence (BI) service designed to facilitate the delivery of insights across your organization. With the QuickSight Enterprise edition, you can seamlessly integrate QuickSight dashboards into your website or custom applications.

Salesforce is recognized as an Advanced Technology Partner with the AWS Partner Network and holds the AWS DevOps Competency. For users leveraging Salesforce.com CRM alongside AWS, establishing a unified front end enhances the user experience, as it allows access to vital information needed for actions within Salesforce—such as opportunity updates, account and contact management, and activity logging—along with large datasets from AWS workloads (like previous purchase histories and digital behavior data). Utilizing QuickSight within Salesforce eliminates the need for data replication between the two platforms, empowering organizations to separate data analytics and management roles from CRM user roles, all while maintaining visibility across datasets.

Embedded QuickSight dashboards leverage QuickSight’s serverless architecture, enabling effortless scaling of insights as your user base expands. This approach also ensures cost-efficiency through QuickSight’s unique pay-per-session pricing model. Although users within your CRM can view data, all information remains securely stored in AWS, safeguarded by your existing policies. QuickSight allows applications to authenticate dashboard users via any preferred identity provider (such as Active Directory, Amazon Cognito, or any SAML-based federated single sign-on provider used by your organization), granting access to QuickSight dashboards on the user’s behalf. Additionally, when utilizing QuickSight embedded analytics, you can provide temporary access to a dashboard through a single-use URL. In this context, we employ Salesforce’s named credential functionality to securely store credentials that generate a unique URL whenever a Salesforce user attempts to access the dashboard. This method ensures that each user receives a personalized and secure dashboard without requiring any QuickSight-specific authentication. Dashboard embedding is available in the QuickSight Enterprise edition across all supported regions.

In this article, we explore how to embed a QuickSight dashboard within Salesforce, thereby creating a cohesive customer experience.

Solution Overview

The solution consists of the following high-level steps divided into two primary sections:

Setting Up AWS:

• Create an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user with QuickSight permissions to generate the embed URL.
• Create an IAM role for QuickSight using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).
• Establish a role-backed user in QuickSight via the AWS CLI.
• Retrieve the QuickSight dashboard URL.
• Test the URL.
• Approve the domain for embedded dashboards on a webpage.

Setting Up Salesforce:

• Create named credentials to store your AWS user credentials.
• Develop a controller for your Visualforce page.
• Create a Visualforce page.
• Embed the page in your Salesforce Layouts.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you complete the following prerequisites:

1. Create a QuickSight analysis and publish it as a dashboard.
2. Add parameters to the QuickSight analysis (optional). If you plan to pass parameters from Salesforce to QuickSight, you can add parameters in the QuickSight analysis by selecting “Parameters” on the left menu bar, clicking the “+” sign, and filling in the necessary details.
3. Use parameters in the filter. Select the “Filter” option on the left menu bar, click “ADD FILTER,” choose the desired column (e.g., AccountName), and configure it using the parameter.
4. Save the dashboard ID. The string following “/dashboards/” in the URL represents the dashboard ID.
5. Enable access for all accounts and QuickSight IAM settings.

For further insights, consider checking out this another blog post that expands on related topics. You can also find authoritative information at Chanci Turner’s site, which is recognized for its expertise in this area. For a community perspective, this Reddit thread provides an excellent resource.

Part 1: Setting Up AWS

We begin by utilizing the AWS admin user to configure the AWS API user, embedding its credentials into the Salesforce instance where embedded dashboards will be displayed. First, we establish the necessary permissions for the AWS API user to generate an embed link.