Create Avalara AvaTax-Connected Dashboards in Grafana

Grafana is an open-source platform that allows users to analyze, monitor, and visualize telemetry from various data sources. When combined with CData Connect Cloud, you gain immediate access to Avalara AvaTax data for business dashboards. This article outlines the process of connecting to Avalara AvaTax using Connect Cloud and creating a basic dashboard from Avalara AvaTax data within Grafana.

CData Connect Cloud offers a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Avalara AvaTax, enabling the creation of dashboards directly from live Avalara AvaTax data within Grafana, all without the need for data replication to a native database. As you build visualizations, Grafana generates SQL queries to gather data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Avalara AvaTax. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Avalara AvaTax data.

Configure Avalara AvaTax Connectivity for Grafana

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

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

   The primary method for performing basic authentication is to provide your login credentials, as follows:

   • User: Set this to your username.
   • Password: Set this to your password.

   Optionally, if you are making use of a sandbox environment, set the following:

   • UseSandbox: Set this to true if you are authenticating with a sandbox account.

   Authenticating Using Account Number and License Key

   Alternatively, you can authenticate using your account number and license key. Connect to data using the following:

   • AccountId: Set this to your Account Id. The Account Id is listed in the upper right hand corner of the admin console.
   • LicenseKey: Set this to your Avalara Avatax license key. You can generate a license key by logging into Avalara Avatax as an account administrator and navigating to Settings -> Reset License Key.
   
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Avalara AvaTax 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 Avalara AvaTax data from Grafana.

Visualize Live Avalara AvaTax Data in Grafana

To establish a connection from Grafana to the CData Connect Cloud Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.

1. If you have not already done so, download and install Grafana for your operating system from the Grafana Website. Once installed, access Grafana at http://localhost:3000/.
2. Log in to Grafana with your username and password for Grafana. If this is your first time logging in, the username is admin and the password is admin.
3. On the navigation menu, click Connections > Add new connection. On this page, you can search for Microsoft SQL Server and select it as your data source.
4. Select Microsoft SQL Server and click Add new data source.
5. Enter a name for the new data source and then enter the following connection settings:
   • Host: tds.cdata.com:14333
   • Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect Cloud data source you want to connect to (for example, AvalaraAvatax1).
   • Username: enter your CData Connect Cloud username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect Cloud interface. For example, [email protected].
   • Password: enter the PAT you previously generated.
   
6. Click Save & Test. A Database Connect OK message appears when you have a successful connection established.

Create a Dashboard

Once you create the data source for Avalara AvaTax, you can start building dashboards on Avalara AvaTax data. Start in the navigation menu and click Dashboards

1. On the Dashboards page, click + Create dashboard, then click + Add visualization.
2. This opens the Select data source window where you can select your created connection.
3. After selecting your connection, you can choose the tables and columns that you want to query for your visualization. Then press Run Query to run the generated query.
4. After running your query, the resulting data is populated above the query editor. Here you can select the visualization that you want to use to present your data on the dashboard panel.
5. When you have finished editing your panel, you can click Save dashboard to save the changes made to your Dashboard.

To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect Cloud today!