Enabling the MCP Server on Self-Hosted Deployments

Last updated: October 18, 2026

On self-hosted deployments, the Sisense MCP Server runs on your own Sisense instance. It is disabled by default and is deployed only after an administrator enables it at install or upgrade. Once enabled, your instance serves the MCP endpoint, and users connect to it with the same OAuth 2.1 sign-in used on Managed Cloud.

What Enabling the MCP Server Deploys

Enabling the MCP Server adds the following to your deployment:

• oauth-gateway - Handles the OAuth 2.1 sign-in and issues each user a short-lived, per-user credential.

• mcp-service - The MCP backend that runs the tools on behalf of the signed-in user.

Your existing API gateway is configured to serve the endpoint on your current host at https://<your-deployment>/mcp. No separate ingress or DNS entry is required.

No encryption-key setup is required. The keys the OAuth gateway uses are generated and stored by Sisense automatically.

Prerequisites

• Your deployment is on Sisense 2026.3.1 or later.

• The DNS name of your deployment (application_dns_name, also known as the system alias) is set to the URL your users use to reach Sisense. See The DNS Name and the OAuth Sign-In below.

• If multitenancy is enabled on your deployment, review Limitations before you begin.

Enabling the MCP Server

1. Confirm that your deployment is on Sisense 2026.3.1 or later.

2. Open the installer configuration file you deploy with (config.yaml or cluster_config.yaml), and add the sisenseMcp setting under global::

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   global:
     sisenseMcp:
       enabled: true

   Note:

   In Sisense 2026.3.x, the default configuration files do not include the sisenseMcp setting, so you must add it yourself. If your file already has a global: section, add sisenseMcp inside it rather than creating a second global: section. Indentation matters: a top-level sisenseMcp: entry that is not nested under global: is ignored.

3. Run the installer or upgrade to apply the change.

4. Verify that the oauth-gateway and mcp-service pods are running:

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   kubectl -n sisense get pods | grep -E 'oauth-gateway|mcp-service'

   If Sisense is installed in a different namespace, replace sisense with your namespace.

5. Under System Configuration > MCP, make sure the Enabled toggle is on.

6. Give your users the endpoint https://<your-deployment>/mcp (for example, https://company.sisense.com/mcp). See Connecting an AI Agent.

7. Optional: To use the AI-powered tools (buildQuery and buildChart), enable Cloud-Linked Features and set up an LLM provider, as described in the prerequisites of Sisense MCP Server. To display interactive charts in Claude, add the CORS entry described in Interactive Charts in Claude.

The DNS Name and the OAuth Sign-In

The OAuth gateway builds its issuer and sign-in redirect addresses from your deployment's DNS name (application_dns_name, also known as the system alias). Make sure this value is the URL your users actually use to reach Sisense. The MCP endpoint is that URL followed by /mcp.

If you change the DNS name during an upgrade, the OAuth gateway is restarted automatically so that it picks up the new name.

For more information about application_dns_name, see Installing Sisense on Linux.

Deployment Notes

• mcp-service is an internal service (Kubernetes ClusterIP) and is not exposed outside the cluster. All client traffic reaches it through the /mcp endpoint on your existing host.

• mcp-service runs as a single replica by design. Do not enable autoscaling for it. See Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA).

Limitations

• Multitenancy: On self-hosted deployments with multitenancy enabled and more than one tenant, requests to /mcp return the Sisense "Page not Found" page instead of reaching the MCP Server, so AI clients cannot connect. There is no workaround. This is fixed in Sisense 2026.4.1. Single-tenant deployments are not affected.

Troubleshooting