Explore Geographical Relationships in Printify Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Printify is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Printify data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Printify data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Printify

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

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

Printify API Profile Settings

In order to authenticate to Printify, you'll need to provide your API Key. To get your API Key navigate to My Profile, then Connections. In the Connections section you will be able to generate your Personal Access Token (API Key) and set your Token Access Scopes. Personal Access Tokens are valid for one year. An expired Personal Access Token can be re-generated using the same steps after it expires. Set the API Key to your Personal Access Token in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Import Printify Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Printify data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Printify Data

After importing the Printify data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Printify entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.