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Get the Report →Build Dashboards with Airtable Data in Dundas BI
Create dynamic dashboards and perform analytics based on Airtable data in Dundas BI.
The CData ODBC Driver for Airtable enables access to live data from Airtable under the ODBC standard, allowing you work with Airtable data in a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and directly, using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to connect to Airtable data as a generic ODBC Data Provider and create charts, reports, and dashboards based on Airtable data in Dundas BI.
Connect to Airtable Data
- If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can configure the DSN using the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.
APIKey, BaseId and TableNames parameters are required to connect to Airtable. ViewNames is an optional parameter where views of the tables may be specified.
- APIKey : API Key of your account. To obtain this value, after logging in go to Account. In API section click Generate API key.
- BaseId : Id of your base. To obtain this value, it is in the same section as the APIKey. Click on Airtable API, or navigate to https://airtable.com/api and select a base. In the introduction section you can find "The ID of this base is appxxN2ftedc0nEG7."
- TableNames : A comma separated list of table names for the selected base. These are the same names of tables as found in the UI.
- ViewNames : A comma separated list of views in the format of (table.view) names. These are the same names of the views as found in the UI.
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.
- Open the Dundas BI interface, open the menu, and click New Data Connector.
- Configure the Dundas BI Data Connector:
- Name the Data Connector.
- Select "ODBC generic" as the Data Provider.
- Check the "Use System DSN" checkbox.
- Select the appropriate System DSN.
Add Airtable Data to a Dashboard
You are now ready to create a dashboard with Airtable data.
- Navigate to the Home page.
- Click Explore Data.
- Expand the appropriate Data Connector.
- Drag the relevant data from the Connector to the panel.
- You can select an entire "table" to add, but you may need to remove Measures/Rows from the Metric Set to build an appropriate visualization. Alternatively, you can select only the fields you wish to include in the visualization.
- With the fields selected, you can add any filters or conditions on the Measures and Rows, further customizing the visualization.
- Click Re-visualize from the menu bar and select the appropriate visualization for the data.
- Click Add To New Dashboard to add the visualization to a new dashboard.
- Configure the dashboard, creating dynamic visualizations of Airtable data.