Step 1: Set up permissions - Amazon QuickSight

Step 1: Set up permissions

Important

Amazon QuickSight has new APIs for embedding analytics: GenerateEmbedUrlForAnonymousUser and GenerateEmbedUrlForRegisteredUser.

You can still use the GetDashboardEmbedUrl and GetSessionEmbedUrl APIs to embed dashboards and the QuickSight console, but they do not contain the latest embedding capabilities. For the latest up-to-date embedding experience, see Embedding QuickSight analytics into your applications.

In the following section, you can find out how to set up permissions for the backend application or web server. This task requires administrative access to IAM.

Each user who accesses a QuickSight assumes a role that gives them Amazon QuickSight access and permissions to the console session. To make this possible, create an IAM role in your AWS account. Associate an IAM policy with the role to provide permissions to any user who assumes it. Add quicksight:RegisterUser permissions to ensure that the reader can access QuickSight in a read-only fashion, and not have access to any other data or creation capability. The IAM role also needs to provide permissions to retrieve console session URLs. For this, you add quicksight:GetSessionEmbedUrl.

The following sample policy provides these permissions for use with IdentityType=IAM. 

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Action": "quicksight:RegisterUser",
      "Resource": "*",
      "Effect": "Allow"
    },
    {
      "Action": "quicksight:GetSessionEmbedUrl",
      "Resource": "*",
      "Effect": "Allow"
    }
  ]
}

The following sample policy provides permission to retrieve a console session URL. You use the policy without quicksight:RegisterUser if you are creating users before they access an embedded session.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "quicksight:GetSessionEmbedUrl"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

If you use QUICKSIGHT as your identityType and provide the user's Amazon Resource Name (ARN), you also need to allow the quicksight:GetAuthCode action in your policy. The following sample policy provides this permission.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "quicksight:GetSessionEmbedUrl",
        "quicksight:GetAuthCode"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Your application's IAM identity must have a trust policy associated with it to allow access to the role that you just created. This means that when a user accesses your application, your application can assume the role on the user's behalf and provision the user in QuickSight. The following example shows a role called embedding_quicksight_console_session_role, which has the sample policy preceding as its resource. 

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": {
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::11112222333:role/embedding_quicksight_console_session_role"
    }
}

For more information regarding trust policies for OpenID Connect or SAML authentication, see the following sections of the IAM User Guide: