Issue embedding iFrames from Viya into a third party content management system (CMS)

[matthewlynch]

Hi All

I've had a look around the Viya community and can't see any posts on this topic so thought i'd ask a question...

Background

We've just had SAS Visual Analytics on Viya (8.2) commissioned in our organisation. We're intending to use this to replace our existing Visual Analytics (9.4 / 7.4) install.

The way we use VA is to surface reports using the report viewer in iFrames, and place these in an external web content management system which sits on a separate server within the same hosted environment (so VA = server1.example.com and CMS = server2.example.com). This works very well for the 9.4 environment. The only thing I had to do was to whitelist server2.example.com on the VA install to allow for cross-domain proxy, etc.

The issue

Having tried to undertake the same task with VA on Viya; I LOVE the fact that the report viewer now generates en embeddable iframe link directly within it which i can use to embed into the CMS - complete with perameters such as what menus to show, etc. So far so good.  However, the problem is that when I then try to make use of this link; I get a blank iframe.  In 9.4/7.4, I would at least get a SAS screen saying there was a problem, etc - but with 8.2 I get nothing at all.

Things i've tried

1) Embedding the link in another page (i.e. a handcrafted HTML file on my desktop) which has the same effect. 

2) Using the non-embeddable link and pasting this directly into the browser address bar (this works)

3) Using the non-embeddable link and using this in handcrafted iFrame code (doesn't work).

This is something i've done a LOT, so i'm sure that the iFrame code, etc are correct - no definitely not a basic HTML coding issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why I'm getting a blank white iFrame instead of at least something SAS branded?

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Matt

[matthewlynch]

Quick update....

Having run inspector in FireFox to ascertain what kind of issue this may relate to, I get the following error:

Load denied by X-Frame-Options: https://server1.example.com/SASLogon/home does not permit cross-origin framing.

(I've changed the server name for obvious reasons).

So... this looks to me like SAS isn't whitelisting the CMS server (server2.example.com) - however, I thought I had done this correctly.

Looking at the "sas.crossproxydomain" definition; i've got a regular expression which matches the CMS server address (tested working using RegExr.com)

[matthewlynch · Accepted solution]

So the solution for this was a little hidden, but for anyone who may come across the same issue in the future, please read the "Embedding Externally" section in the following PDF:

https://support.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2018/2145-2018.pdf

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