Create BambooHR-Connected Visualizations in Klipfolio



Use CData Connect Server to connect to BambooHR from Klipfolio and build custom visualizations using live BambooHR data.

Klipfolio is an online dashboard platform for building real-time business dashboards for your team or your clients. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to BambooHR data for visualizations, reports, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for BambooHR in Connect Server and build visualizations from BambooHR data in Klipfolio.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for BambooHR, allowing you to easily build reports from live BambooHR data in Klipfolio — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Klipfolio generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Server pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to BambooHR, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested BambooHR data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for BambooHR Data

CData Connect Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

  1. Login to Connect Server and click Connections.
  2. Select "BambooHR" from Available Data Sources.
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to BambooHR.

    Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the BambooHR Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\bamboohr.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for BambooHR (see below).

    BambooHR API Profile Settings

    In order to authenticate to BambooHR, you'll need to provide your API Key. To generate an API key, log in and click your name in the upper right-hand corner of any page to get to the user context menu. If you have sufficient permissions, there will be an "API Keys" option in that menu to go to the page, where you can create a new API Key. Additionally, you will need to set the Domain, found in the domain name of your BambooHR account. For example if your BambooHR account is acmeinc.bamboohr.com, then the Domain should be 'acmeinc'. Set both the API Key and Domain in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

  4. Click Save Changes
  5. Click Privileges -> Add and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions.

With the virtual database created, you are ready to connect to BambooHR data from Klipfolio.

Connect to BambooHR in Klipfolio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Klipfolio to create a new BambooHR data source.

  1. Open Klipfolio
  2. Click in Data Feeds on the left panel to add a new data source.
  3. Search for and select MS SQL as the Service.
  4. Click "Create a custom MSSQL data source"
  5. Configure the data source by setting the SQL Server connection properties:
    • Host: your instance (e.g., CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
    • Port: 1433
    • Database: your database (e.g., API1)
    • Driver: MS SQL
    • Username: your Connect Server username
    • Password: your Connect Server password
    • SQL Query: any query to retrieve data (e.g., SELECT * FROM Employees)
    • Select the checkbox to "Include column headers"
  6. Click "Get data" to preview the BambooHR data before building a data model.

Build a Data Model

After retrieving the data, click "Continue." In the new window, configure your data model.

  1. Confirm that the model includes all columns you wish to work with
  2. Name your model
  3. (optional) Set the Description
  4. Set "Header in row" to 1
  5. Click the toggle to "Exclude data before row" and set the value to 2
  6. Click "Save data feed"

Create a Klip

With the data modeled, we are ready to create a Klip (or visualization) of the data to be used in the Klipfolio platform for dashboards, reporting, and more.

  1. Click "Add Metric"
  2. Select a measure, placed on the y-axis, to track.
  3. Select up to five dimensions/columns, for the x-axis, that you wish to visualize.
  4. Click "Save metric"

SQL Access to BambooHR Data from Applications

Now you have a Klip built from live BambooHR data. You can add it to a new dashboard, share, and more. Easily create more data sources and new visualizations, produce reports, and more — all without replicating BambooHR data.

To get SQL data access to 200+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your applications, try CData Connect Server.

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CData Connect Server