Embed the Full Visier Application

Learn how to embed the full Visier application in your solution.

Overview

You can embed the full Visier application in your solution using an iframe, as shown in the following screenshot.

Tip: To access a mock web application that embeds Visier for an analytic tenant, please visit Visier's Embedding Exemplar. To integrate with Visier using the embedding exemplar, you must set up single sign-on for your analytic tenants. For more information, see Step Three: Set up single sign-on for your analytic tenants.

To understand the navigation experience, you must first understand that Visier organizes content into sections and rooms. A section is a high-level container with multiple rooms such as the solution experience or Studio. A room is a specific content container; for example, the solution experience contains the Guidebooks, Explore, and Analyses rooms. In this article, you will learn how to embed Visier with a hidden iframe and how to render rooms on the Visier navigation bar.

You should be familiar with the following terms to understand this article:

  • Visier App Server: The server that hosts the Visier solution. This is the interface that your users see while using Visier in your application.
  • Visier Login Server: The server that hosts Visier's login interface. This is how your users access the platform.
  • Administrating tenant: A tenant that manages one or more analytic tenants. Administrating tenants are capable of creating further analytic tenants and navigating to existing analytic tenants to support them.
  • Analytic tenant: A tenant that represents an organization's Visier instance. Each of your customers has their own analytic tenant with a unique code and a user-friendly display name.
  • Production tenant: The final version of the software that's made available to end users. The production tenant supports the project workflow so you can test changes without impacting production tenants, such as content changes, data mappings, and ETL changes.
  • Integration tenant: A copy of your production tenant. You can use an integration tenant to test workflows without impacting the production tenants, such as automation, data transfers, and application integration.

Additionally, this article assumes that you already created users in Visier and assigned security permissions to users. For more information, see User Management and Permission Management.

The following list outlines the high-level steps to embed Visier in your organization.

  1. Add Visier's embedding script to the page in which you want to embed Visier. 
  2. On the page in which you want to embed Visier, add an iframe and assign the iframe an ID.

    Note: You can optionally embed multiple full application iframes on the same page, such as to embed Guidebooks in one iframe and Vee in a different iframe.

  3. Render Visier in your application. First, retrieve Visier's rooms (application sections) and then decide which of the returned rooms to embed in your application. You can optionally:
    • Specify the landing page in the embedded Visier app.
    • Add links on your navigation bar to the embedded Visier app. You can add Visier navigation links to your navigation bar to allow your users to navigate to different Visier rooms; for example, Explore or Compare.
  4. Handle Visier sessions in your application, such as alignment between sessions in your application and in Visier, and session exceptions that may occur.
  5. Configure a click-through link so that users are redirected into your application after clicking a Visier hyperlink, such as a shared analysis or embedded visualization.
  6. Set up event handling/listeners so that you can handle events or errors like invalid visualizations or missing analyses.
  7. Set up uptime monitoring to spot an outage in a timely manner.

The above steps are described in more detail in this article.

Tip: We recommend that you validate in a pre-production environment using your partner integration tenant before integrating with the production tenant.

Prerequisites

There are a few steps you must take before you can start integrating Visier into your solution, as described next.

After you complete the prerequisites, you can start the technical development to integrate Visier into your solution.

Note: Before embedding Visier in your application, review Visier's Supported Browsers and System Requirements.

Step One: Add Visier's embedding script to your target page

On the page in which you want to embed the Visier application, add the below script. The script downloads Visier's SDK and makes Visier's embedding API available through a visier function. For example, use the API to keep the Visier session alive with visier("trigger", "PARENT_SESSION_ALIVE").

Note:  

  • In the script, you can use the visierConfig object to configure the embedded Visier application. For more information about visierConfig, see visierConfig fields.
  • Before running the script, replace the placeholder text with your unique values, such as your unique visierUrl and idpUrl.
  • We recommend that you only use a single instance of the sdk.v2.js file. The SDK is designed to handle a single instance, so using multiple instances may lead to unexpected results. With a single instance, you’ll get the best performance because the SDK only initializes once. Plus, you only have to manage a single session which makes usage tracking easier.

  • For more information about Visier's SDK, see SDK file history.
  • For more methods you can use with the visier function, see Embedding API Methods.
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// Declare the visierConfig
const visierConfig = {
    visierUrl: "https://example.visier.com/hr",
    idpUrl: "https://idp.example.com" // The idpUrl must point to the endpoint that automatically posts a SAML assertion to Visier.
};

// Add a script element pointing to the SDK and make its public functions available.
(function(w, d, t, s, c, v, e, x) {
    w['VisierEmbedder'] = v;
    w[v] = w[v] || function() {
        (w[v].q = w[v].q || []).push(arguments)
    };
    if (!d.getElementById(s)) {
        // Add the script if it was not already added before.
        e = d.createElement(t);
        x = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];
        e.id = s;
        e.async = true;
        e.src = c.visierUrl ? c.visierUrl + s : (c.loginUrl ? c.loginUrl.split("/auth/embedded")[0] + s : s);
        x.parentNode.insertBefore(e, x);
    }
})(window, document, 'script', '/assets/embedded/webAssets/sdk.v2.js', visierConfig, 'visier');

// Bootstrap the SDK with the visierConfig.
visier('bootstrap', visierConfig);

visierConfig fields

The following fields in the visierConfig code snippet allow you to handle the embedded Visier application.

Field Description Type Required Notes
visierUrl The URL that handles the automatic login workflow that triggers a SAML authentication request when loading the embedded visual. Visier uses this URL to download the sdk.v2.js file.

string

Required

 

loginUrl (Deprecated)

The URL that handles the automatic login workflow that triggers a SAML authentication request when loading the embedded visual. string Required Deprecated. Use visierUrl.
idpUrl

The IdP URL that handles hidden sessions and posts valid SAML assertions. For more information about SAML assertions, see SAML assertion parameters.

The idpUrl must point to the endpoint that automatically posts a SAML assertion to Visier. The session connection timeout limit is 5 seconds. If a session isn't connected in 5 seconds, the user sees a message. This enables the user to manually validate themselves against your IdP and establish a session with Visier using a popup window.

string Optional  

requestTimeout

 

The amount of time in milliseconds that Visier will wait while processing a request before stopping the request. If the default timeout of 10000 milliseconds (10 seconds) is too short, use this field to define a longer timeout time.

number

Optional

Default is timeout after 10000 milliseconds.

startSession

If true, the API authenticates immediately in the bootstrap call.

Boolean

Optional

Default is false.

Understand session management

To run an embedded Visier application, Visier's API authenticates your users as Visier users. To authenticate users, the API creates a session and provides APIs to keep the session alive or to clean up the session. Visier uses dynamic session handling to manage session expiration and renewals. By default, the session renewal window is 55 minutes. This means that a session will not timeout if there has been any server activity in the last 55 minutes.

By default, the maximum session duration is 12 hours. As long as the user is active, Visier renews their session up to a maximum of 12 hours. You may choose to override this duration by setting the SessionNotOnOrAfter attribute on the SAML assertion.

Tip: Visier recommends that you set SessionNotOnOrAfter to be greater than your own session timeout to ensure that the maximum validity of the Visier session is longer than yours.

You can manage session validity in Studio in the following ways:

  • You can change the idle timeout duration.
  • If the SessionNotOnOrAfter attribute is not provided through your IdP, you can set the maximum session length duration. For more information, see Set Up Session Validity.

To ensure that the Visier session does not expire before the max validity while the user is active in your application, you can periodically call visier("trigger", "PARENT_SESSION_ALIVE"). For more information, see User is active in your application but not in Visier.

If the Visier session does expire, your app can send a new SAML assertion without reloading the entire Visier solution to renew the session. For more information, see Handle session alignment.

SAML assertion parameters

Parameter Description Type Required
X509Certificate A digital document that securely associates a key pair with your identity. This certificate authenticates your session. string Required
Issuer The partner's IdP URL. string Required
nameID The tenant user’s username within Visier's system, such as a unique email address associated with a user. For example, 12345.WFF_j1r~c7o@jupiter.com. string Required
userEmail The tenant user's email address within Visier’s system. This is the user's preferred email address for receiving email content from Visier. For example, jane@callisto.com. string Required
displayName The user's full name. If the displayName is not specified, the nameID is used. string Optional
tenantCode The tenant code within Visier’s system. For example, WFF_j1r~c7o. string Required
Recipient

Visier's SSO endpoint URL.

https://{vanity-name}.visier.com/VServer/auth/authenticateWithSaml

string Required
Audience

Visier's SSO endpoint URL.

https://{vanity-name}.visier.com/VServer/auth/authenticateWithSaml

string Required
SessionNotOnOrAfter A timestamp defining the maximum validity of a Visier session. string Optional
locale

The tenant user's preferred locale in the IETF BCP 47 language tag format. If specified, the locale attribute value is resolved to a locale supported by Visier and stored in the user’s preferences. This overrides any existing language preference that the user may have selected.

If you enter an unsupported locale, Visier's default locale is en. For example, if you enter the unsupported locale "ja", Visier will use "en".

If you enter a detailed locale variant like "es-MX", Visier will use the supported locale "es".

Supported locales: en, de, es, fr.

string Optional
currency

The tenant user’s preferred currency. If specified, the currency code value is resolved to a currency supported by Visier and stored in the user’s preferences. This overrides any existing currency preference that the user may have selected.

If you enter an unsupported currency, Visier’s default currency is the currency configured in the administrating tenant.

Currency codes must follow ISO 4217 standards.

string Optional

Step Two: Add an iframe to your target page

On the page in which you want to embed the Visier application, add an iframe and give the iframe an ID. The Visier application is embedded in your application through the iframe. The iframe's ID is the string you pass for visier-container to load Visier in your application. You can optionally embed multiple full application iframes on the same page, such as to embed Guidebooks in one iframe and Vee in a different iframe. For more information, see Load the Visier application in your iframe.

Step Three: Render Visier in your application

After getting a valid Visier session, you can then render Visier in your application. First, you need to retrieve the available Visier rooms for the navigation bar and then render the associated Visier navigation links in your application.

To render Visier rooms, you must first retrieve links for each navigation item. Call visier("get", "APPLICATION_SECTIONS")

Render navigation links

After fetching the available Visier rooms (application sections), you might want to add links to Visier rooms in your application's navigation bar. The following code sample is an example of how to render Visier links on your navigation bar.

Direct navigation to Visier iframe

When a user selects a Visier room on your navigation bar, your code should trigger navigation to the iframe.

Note: If you have multiple iframes, specify visier-container; for example, visier("trigger", "NAVIGATE", selectedUrl, visier-container1);. If the page has one iframe, you can omit visier-container.

Load the Visier application in your iframe

On your target page, call one of the following:

  •  visier("embedApp", "visier-container"). This loads Visier on the target page in the specified iframe. The landing page defaults to the Visier default.
  • visier("embedApp", "visier-container", landingUrl). In addition to loading Visier in the specified iframe, this also allows you to specify a specific Visier room as the landing page.

Note: You can optionally embed multiple full application iframes on the same page, such as to embed Guidebooks in one iframe and Vee in a different iframe. To use multiple iframes, add additional containers; for example, visier("embedApp", "visier-container1", "visier-container2")

Step Four: Handle Visier sessions in your application

When one of your users interacts with the embedded Visier application, there is a session in your application and a session in the Visier application. Your code should handle session alignment between your application and Visier, as well as any session exceptions that may occur.

Handle session alignment

It's important to properly handle sessions between your application and Visier. There are some cases that require alignment between your application and Visier, including:

  • The user is active in Visier but not in your application.
  • The user is active in your application but not in Visier.
  • The Visier session expired.

Note: Usernames are unique identifiers and must be unique across all tenants. Different usernames can use the same email address.

User is active in Visier but not in your application

By default, the API continues to emit a VISIER_SESSION_ALIVE message every five (5) minutes. This message contains a timestamp of the user's last activity in the Visier application. To provide a positive user experience, we recommend that your application listens for this message and acts appropriately.

To change the frequency of the VISIER_SESSION_ALIVE message:

  1. Sign in to Visier.
  2. Navigate to Studio.
  3. On the global navigation bar, click Settings > Embedded App Config.
  4. Type a number in minutes. This specifies how frequently Visier emits the VISIER_SESSION_ALIVE message.
  5. When finished, click Save.

User is active in your application but not in Visier

Given that Visier sessions remain active as long as there is some server activity in the previous 55 minutes, you can choose to trigger a message through Visier's API: visier("trigger", "PARENT_SESSION_ALIVE"). This triggers a request to the Visier server in the background to ensure the session is renewed if needed. As the renewal window for a Visier session is 55 minutes, we recommend triggering this message every 10 to 15 minutes.

Note: Always clear the interval when ending your session with Visier.

Visier session expired

When the Visier session expires, the API emits a VISIER_SESSION_EXPIRED message. You can then choose to either renew the session by calling embedApp or get for APPLICATION_SECTIONS again, or take any other appropriate action to ensure a smooth user experience.

Handle session exceptions

Some exceptions exist for sessions, such as when a user logs out from your application while loading a Visier session. These exceptions are handled individually, including:

  • User logout from your application.
  • Visier solution is down for maintenance.
  • Authentication/SSO error occurred.

User logout from your application

Your application should send a PARENT_SESSION_CLEANUP message through the API's trigger method. The API will clean up the Visier session.

Visier solution is down for maintenance

The API emits a VISIER_APP_DOWN message in the event that any maintenance is being performed. Ensure that your application listens for this message and acts appropriately.

Authentication/SSO error occurred

In case of unsuccessful user login or incorrect SSO set up, API emits a message with details about the error that occurred. All authentication and SSO errors are communicated with the SESSION_ERROR message.

These errors must be handled with care as they may block user workflows. Examples of scenarios in which this error may be thrown include, but are not limited to, missing or expired certificates, disabled SSO, usernames not found, and invalid tenant codes.

For support, please contact Visier.

Handle multi-tenant sessions

For users that have access to multiple tenants in Visier, we recommend using a single tab to access tenants. If you want to access a second tenant, we recommend that you remove the old iframe and create a new one to load the new tenant into.

Note: If you choose to use multiple tabs, your code should clean up any prior tabs for different users so that multiple tabs can't be used simultaneously.

To handle multi-tenant sessions, set up your embedding code so that the following procedure occurs:

  1. The previous user or tenant session is cleaned up before a new session is created for a different user or tenant.
  2. The tab containing the previous user or tenant session receives an EJECT_SESSION session message through the Visier on method. When the tab receives this message, your code must remove or clear the Visier app iframe or Visier chart containers. This prevents the embedded content for this user from being used further.

    Caution: If using multiple tabs and EJECT_SESSION isn't implemented, further interactions with the embedded content in prior tabs will pick up the authentication tokens for the new user and erroneously start showing content for the new user.

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    Sample code
    visier.on("session", function (msg) {
      if (msg.code === "EJECT_SESSION") {
        showSessionEndedMessage();
        document.body.removeChild(document.getElementById("visier-app"));
      }
    });
  3. After clean up succeeds, the new tab continues to set up and load the embedded content for the new user.
  4. If clean up fails, the new tab receives a FAILED_TO_EJECT_PREVIOUS_SESSION error message through the Visier on method and fails to load the embedded content.

Step Five: Redirect users into your application

Visier has several features that allow a user to click on a hyperlink that redirects the user into the full application, such as analysis sharing, email push, and embedded visuals. To ensure that these features redirect users back into your app within the Visier iframe, you must configure a click-through link in Visier.

Note: If there is no Visier session already established for the user, the user is first redirected to your app's login page for authentication before they are redirected to the analysis within the iframe.

To configure the sharing click-through link:

  1. Sign in to Visier and navigate to Studio.
  2. On the global navigation bar, click Projects.
  3. Open or create a project.
  4. Navigate to Model > Settings > Navigation, Notices & Links.
  5. Enable the Sharing click-through link toggle.
  6. Enter the URL that hosts the Visier iframe in your app.
  7. Publish your changes to production to use the sharing click-through link in subsequent analysis links and emails sent by Visier.

Caution: If Sharing click-through link is disabled, your users cannot be redirected to your app even if the link is set with the correct value.

When your application is loaded, it should search for the analysis_url query parameter in the URL. If this query parameter is present, your application should do the following:

  1. Get the encoded analysis URL.
  2. Call embedApp or navigate with the iframe container name and the analysis URL.

You can do one of the following to configure the URL:

  • Use one URL across customers: Allows you to set a base URL to redirect all customers to. When a user clicks a visualization, they are redirected to the set URL. The visual also appends the analysis ID which can be passed to the Visier iframe to land on.
  • Handle customer-specific URLs: Allows you to pass in the customer URL as a config option on the visualization. The visual also appends the analysis ID which can be passed to the Visier iframe to land on.

Step Six: Set up event handling/listeners

The embedding API exposes a number of events that can be used for custom event handlers, which can be added right after calling the bootstrap method. Visier also recommends adding a listener for the error event so that you may take action if the chart or analysis is not working as expected.

Events

Info event type

Info is an informational event, such as if the visualization is rendered. The following table defines the possible info messages.

Message Description
EMBEDDED_CHART_READY_FOR_FILTERS The embedded chart is ready to accept dynamic context filters.

EMBEDDED_CHART_RENDERED

The embedded chart has finished rendering.

VISIER_APP_LOADED

The embedded application loaded successfully. You can use this event to keep track of whether the app is already loaded to prevent loading more than once.

Error event type

Error is an error event for failures that prevent the app or embedded visualization from continuing, such as incorrect configurations. The following table defines the possible error messages.

Message Description

Applicable To

CANNOT_FIND_ANALYSIS The given analysis could not be found. The ID may be invalid, it may have been deleted, or the user does not have access.

Embedded visualizations only

CANNOT_FIND_CONTENT Could not find a valid visual in the provided analysis for embedding.

Embedded visualizations only

CHART_DATA_ERROR

Chart data was not present or incorrect type was found.

Embedded visualizations only

CONFIG_INVALID

Chart config is invalid. The chart field in the config should be an array of objects.

Embedded visualizations only

CONTAINER_MISSING

The container to embed the content in cannot be found.

Embedded application or embedded visualizations

FILTERS_NOT_DEFINED

No filters were defined when invoking dynamic filters.

Embedded visualizations only

INVALID_APP_URL

Either an invalid URL was passed to the embedApp method or no default URL could be found.

Embedded application only

INVALID_COMMAND

Cannot embed content. Feature flag disabled.

Embedded application or embedded visualizations

INVALID_FILTER_MEMBER

No driving analytic object found.

Embedded visualizations only

SW_LOADING_TIMEOUT

These timeout errors emit if there are unexpected issues with the authentication set up or if the set up took longer than expected, such as due to network latency. Possible causes include:

  • The IdP failed to authenticate the user. Check the Network tab.
  • The service worker failed to load. Look for errors in the Console tab and turn on enableDebugLogging.

Embedded application or embedded visualizations

UNSUPPORTED_FILTER_TYPE

An invalid filter was found. The filter syntax may be incorrect.

Embedded visualizations only

VISIER_APP_DOWN

When Visier is unavailable, render and log an error message.

Embedded application or embedded visualizations

Session event type

Session is an event that is emitted during stages of session management, such as when the platform is attempting to establish a session. The following table defines the possible session messages.

Message Description
AUTO_LOGIN_FAILED

Failed to authenticate the user. Scenarios in which this message may be emitted include, but are not limited to:

  • Failed to authenticate with your IdP because the IdP is not configured properly or is down.
  • Failed to initiate authentication with Visier. Your IdP is not properly configured to send the SAML response to Visier's servers.
  • Failed to authenticate with Visier; for example, the user doesn't exist and auto provisioning is disabled.
  • Authentication process took too long. We recommend extending timeoutRequest in visierConfig in the case of network latency or slow servers.
  • The embeddable domain wasn't added in Visier. There's usually an accompanying error log in the browser's Console stating that it refused to frame the given site due to the content security policy. We recommend checking if your IdP and embedding site was added to the list of emeddable domains in Visier. For more information, see Add Your Domain to the Embeddable Domains List.
SESSION_ERROR

Represents a blocked user flow. Scenarios in which this message may be emitted include, but are not limited to:

  • The SSO configuration for the specified Visier tenant is incorrect or disabled.
  • Auto provisioning is disabled and the user does not have a Visier profile.
  • The tenantCode claim in the SAML assertion is invalid.
  • The SAML assertion sent to Visier's ACS URL is malformed.

SESSION_ESTABLISHED

This message is emitted once an authenticated session has been established with Visier for the current user. We recommend starting a background process to keep the Visier session alive on a regular interval after the session has been established.

USER_AUTO_PROVISION_FAILED

Represents a blocked user flow. The user doesn't exist in Visier and a new Visier user couldn't be created for the current user. Auto provisioning must be enabled. For more information, refer to the message.

USER_AUTO_PROVISION_SUCCESS

This message is emitted when a new Visier user is created automatically for the current user. Auto provisioning must be enabled in your Visier tenant's settings under "Tenant Single Sign-On" and it must be the first time this user is using Visier.

VISIER_SESSION_ALIVE

These events are emitted when the user is active in the Visier application. This allows the parent application to keep its own user session alive when the user is active in Visier but not in the parent application. By default, these messages are emitted once every five minutes, but this can be configured in your Visier tenant under "Embedded App Config".

VISIER_SESSION_EXPIRED

If the user is active in the parent application but not in Visier, the user's session in Visier can expire.

Note: Sending the Visier application iframe PARENT_SESSION_ALIVE messages, as in keepVisierSessionAlive(), prevents the Visier session from expiring. Best practice is to handle expired Visier sessions nonetheless.

To create a new session in the background, call embeddingApp.bootstrapSession();. Once complete, new requests will pick up the new authentication tokens.

Alternatively, call embedApp to restart the process again, including authentication. This will reload the application, which will help clear any errors surface earlier due to the session expiry.

Debug event type

Debug is an event that emits debugging information, including a unique code and time stamp for when the event occurred.

A majority of Visier's embedding logic occurs in the web client, unseen and untracked. You can use debug events to facilitate the debugging process with Visier. If you encounter unexpected errors that you can't resolve, you can reproduce the issue with these debug events logged to your browser Console and then share a copy of the Console logs with Visier Technical Support. You can optionally share the the HAR file from the Network tab as well.

Navigate event type

Navigate is an event that emits internal and external routing information, such as if a user navigates from Guidebooks to Analyses. The following table defines the possible navigate messages.

Message Description
NAVIGATE_EXTERNAL

Indicates navigation from one application to another.

NAVIGATE_INTERNAL

Indigates navigation within Visier; for example, from Guidebooks to Analyses.

Event handling sample

The following code sample provides an example for handling different messages emitted by Visier. For example, if the embedded application fails to auto provision a user, the iframe emits a message with the messageType: USER_AUTOPROVISION_FAILED.

Step Seven: Set up uptime monitoring

We strongly recommend that you set up uptime monitoring as part of your UI integration. To enable uptime monitoring, give Visier a dummy user access in your production environment. This allows Visier to ping your production application every 15 minutes to spot any outage in a timely manner. Pinging your application enables 100% monitoring capabilities. Without this, Visier cannot accurately monitor uptime between both applications.

Troubleshooting

First, ensure that your program listeners properly handle events and messages that are returned. If your issue persists, see Technical FAQ for Embedded Partners.

If you cannot find answers on your own, please gather the following information before contacting Visier:

  • Error messages
  • RCI (the unique error code for each type of the errors)
  • Reproduction steps
  • Expected behavior and current behavior
  • Time stamp
  • Screenshots or screen recording
  • Username or user ID, if applicable
  • Request URL, header, and body, if applicable

The more information provided, the easier it is for Visier to troubleshoot. You can track the issue in the issue logs shared between yourself and Visier.

SDK file history

Review the latest changes to the sdk.v2.js file.

Last updated date

Changes

August 7, 2024

Added support for embedding multiple full application iframes on the same page. This change includes:

  • New visier-container parameter for navigate that allows you to specify an iframe ID. This parameter is required if embedding more than one iframe.
  • New navigate event. This event emits internal and external routing information, such as if a user navigates from Guidebooks to Analyses.

January 10, 2024

Because Google is deprecating third-party cookies, we updated sdk.js to sdk.v2.js. V2 ensures a more resilient integration framework by minimizing dependencies on browsers like Chrome. Failing to adopt these changes will result in users being unable to access analytics in Visier where you've embedded it in your applications. Google's grace period allows transitioning away from third-party cookies until June 30, 2024. This means you have until June 30, 2024 to transition to sdk.v2.js. If you embed the full Visier application and individual Visier visualizations, please ensure that both embedding methods now use sdk.v2.js.