eMondrian Community now has authentication: Keycloak sign-in, rights per group, and AI agents that act as the user

As of 16 November 2026. Applies to eMondrian Community release 2026.11.16 and later: server 10.0.92, modules 0.0.0.109. Authentication arrived in release 2026.11.15; since 2026.11.16 the MCP module is free.

eMondrian Community has authentication. Since release 2026.11.15, every eMondrian Community installation runs behind an authentication gateway with Keycloak. Users sign in with an account kept in Keycloak, in Active Directory or in another LDAP directory. Sign-in through an external identity provider over OIDC or SAML, such as Microsoft Entra ID, Google, Okta or ADFS, can be added to the login page. Rights are set per group. An AI agent connected over MCP acts as the user who signed in and sees only the data that user may see.

Authentication is free and open source, part of eMondrian Community. It is switched off after setup and is switched on with one command.

What eMondrian Community 2026.11.15 includes

None of this needs a license key: the authentication gateway, Keycloak, server rights, schema roles and the MCP module are free.

How sign-in works

The authentication gateway is the only published port of an eMondrian Community installation. Every request from a browser, Excel, Power BI, a script or an AI agent passes through it.

1. The client signs in. A browser uses the Keycloak login page. Excel, Power BI and scripts send a user name and password, or a personal access token as the password. An AI agent signs in with OAuth, with a user name and password, or with a personal access token.
2. Keycloak checks the user. The user is kept in Keycloak, or Keycloak checks the password in Active Directory or LDAP.
3. The gateway passes the user name and the user's groups to the eMondrian server. The eMondrian server never receives the password.
4. The eMondrian server decides what the user may see and do: server rights per group, and roles in the schema for data.

The eMondrian server accepts a user name and groups only from its own gateway. The gateway sends a secret that is generated for each installation, and the eMondrian server refuses a request that names a user without that secret.

What an AI agent sees

With authentication on, every MCP tool call runs as the user who signed in.

• Data. The roles in the schema decide which cubes and members the agent sees. The agent sees the same data as the same user sees in Excel.
• Changes. The server rights of the user's groups decide what the agent may change. An agent of a user without the right to write schemas cannot save a schema. An agent of a user without the right to read logs cannot read logs.
• Formulas. The describe_cube tool shows the formulas of calculated measures only to users who may read the schema.
• Log. Every MCP call is written to logs/mcp-audit.log with the user's name.

The agent gets the same access as its user, not less. Query results go to the agent and to the agent's model provider.

The OAuth login of eMondrian was tested with Claude Code over HTTPS on both MCP transports: streamable HTTP at /emondrian/mcp and HTTP + SSE at /emondrian/mcp/sse. In that test, a user restricted by a schema role saw only the data of one US state, and a user without the right to read logs was refused by the read_logs tool.

Groups and rights

eMondrian names groups by their full path, for example /emondrian-admins or /Sales/EMEA. A plain name such as emondrian-admins matches no group. Membership is not inherited: a right for /Sales does not reach the members of /Sales/EMEA.

eMondrian Community setup creates three groups:

Querying data needs no server right. Which data a user sees is set by roles in the schema:

<Role name="Sales EMEA">
  <SchemaGrant access="none">
    <CubeGrant cube="Sales" access="all"/>
  </SchemaGrant>
  <RoleMember name="/Sales/EMEA"/>
</Role>

A signed-in user who matches no role gets the schema's defaultRole. A schema without a defaultRole gives full access to every signed-in user. Give every schema a restrictive defaultRole before you rely on roles.

Switch authentication on

After setup, authentication is off: everyone who can reach the server is the user guest with all rights. This open mode is for a trusted network only.

./auth/scripts/authentication.sh on       # Linux
.\auth\scripts\authentication.ps1 on      # Windows

Then sign in as admin with the initial password from the documentation and choose a new one. Before other people connect, set PUBLIC_URL in .env and turn on HTTPS. The steps are on the Security page.

Questions and answers

Does eMondrian have authentication?
Yes. eMondrian Community has authentication since release 2026.11.15, with sign-in through Keycloak, Active Directory or LDAP.

Does the eMondrian MCP server have authentication?
Yes. Since eMondrian Community 2026.11.15, the eMondrian MCP server accepts OAuth, a user name and password, or a personal access token, once authentication is switched on.

Do AI agents see all data in eMondrian?
No, not with authentication on. An AI agent connected to eMondrian sees only the data its signed-in user may see under the roles in the schema.

Is authentication only in eMondrian Enterprise?
No. Authentication, rights per group and per-user access for AI agents are part of eMondrian Community. None of it needs a license key.

Is authentication on by default in eMondrian Community?
No. Authentication is off after setup and is switched on with ./auth/scripts/authentication.sh on. With authentication off, everyone who can reach the server has all rights.

Try it

eMondrian Community runs with Docker in a few minutes. Install it, switch authentication on, and connect Excel, Power BI or an AI agent as a user from your own directory.

eMondrian: Demo · GitHub · Docs

More: Security · AI agents (MCP) · Release notes