Tableau Cloud Microsoft 365 Copilot connector (preview)

With the Tableau Cloud Microsoft 365 Copilot connector, your organization can index Tableau sheets in your Tableau Cloud. After you configure the connector and index content from Tableau Cloud, end users can search for those sheets in Microsoft Copilot and from any Microsoft Search client.

This article is for Microsoft 365 administrators or anyone who configures, runs, and monitors a Tableau Cloud Microsoft 365 Copilot connector.

Capabilities

• Index sheets of your Tableau Cloud and supports ingestion filters based on top-level projects.
• Retain access control lists (ACLs) defined by your organization
• Customize your crawl frequency.
• Create workflows using this connection and plugins from Microsoft Copilot Studio.
• Use Semantic search in Copilot to enable users to find relevant content.

Limitations

• Sheets in personal space aren't indexable.

Prerequisites

• You must be the search admin for your organization's Microsoft 365 tenant.

• Configure Connected Apps with Direct Trust in Tableau: To connect to Tableau Cloud and enable the Tableau Cloud Copilot connector to sync sheets regularly, you need to configure and enable Connected Apps with Direct Trust on your Tableau site, using credentials that can access the sheets. Tableau Connected Apps provide a seamless and secure authentication experience by establishing an explicit trust relationship between your Tableau Cloud site and external applications. Find more details here.

Get started

1. Display name

A display name is used to identify each citation in Copilot, helping users easily recognize the associated file or item. Display name also signifies trusted content. The display name is also used as a content source filter. A default value is present for this field, but you can customize it to a name that users in your organization recognize.

2. Tableau Cloud Site URL

A Tableau Cloud site URL typically looks like https://<your-domain>.online.tableau.com/#/site/<site-name>

3. Authentication Type

To enable and configure the Connected Apps with Direct Trust for Tableau Cloud, use the following steps to use Tableau Connected Apps with Direct Trust for authentication.

Step 1: Create a Tableau Connected Apps with Direct Trust

Create a connected app from Tableau Cloud’s Settings page.

1. As a site admin, sign in to Tableau Cloud.

2. From the left pane, select Settings > Connected Apps.

   

3. Select the New Connected App button drop-down arrow and select Direct Trust.

4. Use the information in the following table to fill out the Create Connected App dialog box.

   Field	Description	Recommended Value
   Connected app name	Unique value that identifies the application that you require Direct Trust for.	Microsoft Search and Copilot
   Access Level	To control which views or metrics can be embedded, select "All projects" or "Only one project". All projects: This option enables the content in all projects to be embedded. Only one project: This option enables only the content in the specified project to be embedded. If the specified project contains nested projects, embedding content in those nested projects is not enabled.	"All project" or "Only one project"
   Domain allowlist	the domains where views or metrics can be embedded	All domains

   When finished, select the Create button.

   

5. Next to the connected app's name, select the actions menu and select Enable.

   

Step 2: Generate a secret

1. On the detail page of the connected app you created in Step 1, select the Generate New Secret button.

   

2. Make note of the Secret ID，Secret Value and Client ID to use in Step 3 below.

Step 3: Enter the required fields of Tableau Copilot connector authentication.

Enter the User, Connected App Client ID, Connected App Secret ID and Connected App Secret Key to connect to your Tableau Cloud Site.

Refer to the following table to learn the descriptions of the required fields of Tableau Copilot connector authentication

Field	Description
User	The admin user email. Recommend to fill the email of an admin user who configured the Tableau Connected Apps with Direct Trust.
Connected App Client ID	Client ID of the Tableau Connected Apps with Direct Trust, refer to the value noted in the Step 2 above.
Connected App Secret ID	Secret ID of the Tableau Connected Apps with Direct Trust, refer to the value noted in the Step 2 above.
Connected App Secret Key	Secret Value of the Tableau Connected Apps with Direct Trust, refer to the value noted in the Step 2 above.

4. Staged rollout to a limited audience

Deploy this connection to a limited user base if you want to validate it in Copilot and other Search surfaces before expanding the rollout to a broader audience.

At this point, you're ready to create the connection for Tableau Cloud. You can click the Create button to publish your connection and index sheets from your Tableau Cloud Site.

For other settings, like Access Permissions, Data inclusion rules, Schema, Crawl frequency, etc., we set defaults based on what works best with Tableau Cloud data. The default values are as follows:

Page	Settings	Default values
Users	Access permissions	Only people with access to this data source.
Users	Map Identities	Data source identities mapped using Microsoft Entra IDs.
Content	Index content	All sheets, except the sheets in personal space.
Content	Manage properties	To check default properties and their schema, click here.
Sync	Incremental crawl	Frequency: Every 15 mins
Sync	Full crawl	Frequency: Every day

If you want to edit any of these values, you need to choose Custom setup.

Custom setup

Custom setup is for those admins who want to edit the default values for settings. Once you select Custom setup, you should see three other tabs – Users, Content, and Sync.

Users

Access permissions

The Tableau Cloud Copilot connector supports data visible to Only people with access to this data source (recommended) or Everyone. If you choose Everyone, indexed data appears in the search results for all users.

Note

Tableau's ACL system uses a layered evaluation mechanism to calculate users' effective permissions. When you select "Only people with access to this data source" while configuring the Tableau Cloud Copilot connector, the connector applies a logic similar to Tableau’s native ACL system. This mechanism ensures that the content indexed by the Copilot connector is not overshared with users who don't have appropriate permissions within Tableau Cloud Sites. This image shows the specific rules are applied to determine which permissions govern the content and which users are authorized to access it.

• For admin users, they're always ALLOWED.
• If the user is a “denied user”, part of a “denied group” or in a “denied group set”, the user is DENIED.
• If the user is a project leader or a content owner, the user is ALLOWED.
• If the user is an "allowed user", part of an "allowed group" or in an "allowed group set", the user is ALLOWED.
• If none of the above conditions are satisfied, the user is DENIED.

If you choose Only people with access to this data source, you need to further choose whether your Tableau Cloud Site has Microsoft Entra ID provisioned users or non-AAD users. To identify which option is suitable for your organization:

1. Choose Microsoft Entra ID if the email ID of Tableau Cloud users is same as the UserPrincipalName (UPN) of users in Microsoft Entra ID.

2. Choose non-AAD if the email ID of Tableau Cloud users is different from the UserPrincipalName (UPN) of users in Microsoft Entra ID.

   Important

   • If you choose Microsoft Entra ID as the type of identity source, the connector maps the email IDs of users obtained from Tableau Cloud directly to UPN property from Microsoft Entra ID.
   • If you chose "non-AAD" for the identity type see Map your non-Azure AD Identities for instructions on mapping the identities. You can use this option to provide the mapping regular expression from email ID to UPN.
   • Updates to users or groups governing access permissions are synced in full crawls only. Incremental crawls do not currently support the processing of updates to permissions.

Content

Content ingestion filters

You can choose what data you want to index. All sheets within the selected top-level project of your Tableau Cloud Site are indexed. Use the preview results button to verify the sample values of the selected properties and filters.

Use the preview results button to verify the sample values of the selected properties and filters.

Manage properties

Here, you can check available properties from your Tableau Cloud. Assign a schema to the property (define whether a property is searchable, queryable, retrievable, or refinable), change the semantic label, and add an alias to the property. The default selected properties are listed as follows.

Properties	Semantic Label	Schema	Description
CreatedAt	Created date time	Query, Retrieve	The timestamp indicating when the sheet was originally created.
IconUrl	IconUrl	Retrieve	URL of the icon associated with the different sheet types (e.g., worksheet, dashboard, story), used for display purposes.
LastModifiedBy	Last modified by	Query, Retrieve, Search	The user who last modified the sheet.
Name	Title	Query, Retrieve, Search	The title or display name of the sheet.
ProjectName	None	Query, Search	The name of the parent project under which the sheet resides.
SheetType	None	Query, Refine, Retrieve	The type of sheet, e.g., worksheet, dashboard, story.
SheetUrl	url	Retrieve	Direct URL link to open the sheet in Tableau.
Tags	None	Query, Refine, Retrieve	Tags assigned to the sheet.
TopProjectName	None	Query, Search	The name of the top-level project that contains the sheet.
UpdatedAt	Last modified date time	Query, Retrieve	The timestamp of the most recent modification to the sheet.
WorkbookName	None	Query, Search	The name of the workbook that contains the sheet.

Sync

You can configure full and incremental crawls based on the scheduling options present here. By default, incremental crawl is set for every 15 minutes, and full crawl is set for every day. If needed, you can adjust these schedules to fit your data refresh needs.

Troubleshooting

After publishing your connection, you can review the status under Data sources in the admin center. To learn how to make updates and deletions, see Manage your connector.

If you have issues or want to provide feedback, contact Microsoft Graph.