How to integrate Metabase with Salesforce Marketing Data

Metabase is an open source data visualization tool that allows users to create interactive dashboards. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, users can easily create visualizations and dashboards linked to live Salesforce Marketing data. This article describes how to connect to Salesforce Marketing and build a simple visualization using Salesforce Marketing data.

CData Connect provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Salesforce Marketing, allowing you to easily integrate with live Salesforce Marketing data in Metabase — without replicating the data. Connect looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Metabase and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Salesforce Marketing, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Salesforce Marketing data.

Configure Salesforce Marketing Connectivity for Metabase

Connectivity to Salesforce Marketing from Metabase is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Salesforce Marketing data from Metabase, we start by creating and configuring a Salesforce Marketing connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Salesforce Marketing" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Salesforce Marketing.

   Authenticating to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

   Set the User and Password to your login credentials, or to the credentials for a sandbox user if you are connecting to a sandbox account.

   Connecting to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

   By default, the data provider connects to production environments. Set UseSandbox to true to use a Salesforce Marketing Cloud sandbox account.

   The default Instance is s7 of the Web Services API; however, if you use a different instance, you can set Instance.

4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce Marketing Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Salesforce Marketing data from Metabase.

Connect to CData Connect from Metabase

After creating the virtual database, navigate to your Metabase instance. Use the SQL Server interface to connect to Connect Cloud.

1. Navigate to the administration screen (Settings -> Admin) and click "Add Database" from the "Databases" tab
2. Configure the connection to Connect Cloud and click "Save"
   • Database type: Select "SQL Server"
   • Name: Name the connection (e.g. "Salesforce Marketing (Connect Cloud)")
   • Host: tds.cdata.com
   • Port: 14333
   • Database name: The name of the connection you just created (e.g. SFMarketingCloud1)
   • Username: A Connect Cloud username (e.g. user@mydomain.com)
   • Password: The PAT for the above Connect Cloud user
   • Click to Use a secure connection (SSL)

Execute Salesforce Marketing Data with Metabase

Once you configure the connection to Connect Cloud, you can query Salesforce Marketing and build visualizations.

1. Use the "Write SQL" tool to retrieve the Salesforce Marketing data
2. Write a SQL query based on the Salesforce Marketing connection in CData Connect Cloud, e.g.
   
   

   SELECT Id, Status FROM Subscriber

3. Navigate to the "Visualization" screen, choose a visualization, and configure the visualization

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have built a simple visualization from Salesforce Marketing data in Metabase. You can continue to work with live Salesforce Marketing data in Metabase just like you would any SQL Server database. For more information on creating a live connection to Salesforce Marketing (and more than 100 other data sources), visit the Connect Cloud page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live Salesforce Marketing data in Metabase today.