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Xero WorkflowMax Icon Xero WorkflowMax ODBC Driver

The Xero WorkflowMax ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Xero WorkflowMax, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Xero WorkflowMax data like you would a database - read, write, and update Xero WorkflowMax Clients, Jobs, Leads, Quotes, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.

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Analyze Xero WorkflowMax Data in R


Create data visualizations and use high-performance statistical functions to analyze Xero WorkflowMax data in Microsoft R Open.

Access Xero WorkflowMax data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for Xero WorkflowMax and the RODBC package to work with remote Xero WorkflowMax data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to Xero WorkflowMax data and visualize Xero WorkflowMax data in R.

Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to Xero WorkflowMax as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Xero WorkflowMax follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

To connect to the WorkflowMax API, obtain an APIKey and AccountKey from Xero. This can only be done by contacting Xero support (https://www.workflowmax.com/contact-us).

After obtaining an API Key and Account Key, set the values in the APIKey and AccountKey connection properties. Once these are set, you are ready 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.

Windows

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.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Xero WorkflowMax in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData XeroWorkflowMax Source] Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Xero WorkflowMax Description = My Description APIKey = myApiKey AccountKey = myAccountKey

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint) checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to Xero WorkflowMax Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData XeroWorkflowMax Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models Xero WorkflowMax APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the Xero WorkflowMax API.

clients <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT Id, Name FROM Clients WHERE Name = 'Cynthia'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(clients)

Plot Xero WorkflowMax Data

You can now analyze Xero WorkflowMax data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2)) barplot(clients$Name, main="Xero WorkflowMax Clients", names.arg = clients$Id, horiz=TRUE)