Create Asana Dashboards in Bold BI

Bold BI allows you to create, share, and collaborate on interactive BI dashboards. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to Asana data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Asana and build reports from Asana data in Bold BI.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Asana, allowing you to easily build reports from live Asana data in Bold BI — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Bold BI 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 Asana, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Asana data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Asana 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 "Asana" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Asana.

   You can optionally set the following to refine the data returned from Asana.

   • WorkspaceId: Set this to the globally unique identifier (gid) associated with your Asana Workspace to only return projects from the specified workspace. To get your workspace id, navigate to https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/workspaces while logged into Asana. This displays a JSON object containing your workspace name and Id.
   • ProjectId: Set this to the globally unique identifier (gid) associated with your Asana Project to only return data mapped under the specified project. Project IDs can be found in the URL of your project's Overview page. This will be the numbers directly after /0/.

   Connect Using OAuth Authentication

   You must use OAuth to authenticate with Asana. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Asana using the browser. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

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 Asana data from Bold BI.

Visualize Live Asana Data in Bold BI

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Bold BI to create a new Asana data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into your Bold BI instance, click the data sources tab, create a new data source, and choose the SQL Server connector.
2. Choose the basic configuration and set the connection properties:
   • Name: Name your connection
   • Server name: Your Connect Server instance (CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
   • Port: 1433
   • Username: Your Connect Server username
   • Password: Your Connect Server password
   • Mode: Choose Live to query Asana on-demand or choose Extract to load the data into Bold BI
   • Database: Choose the database you created from the drop-down menu (asanadb)
3. Click Connect
4. Select the table to visualize and drag it onto the workspace.
5. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
6. Click the gear icon for the visualization to configure the visualization properties and assign columns to the visualization.

SQL Access to Asana Data from Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Asana data from your Bold BI workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Asana data.

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