Build Interactive Dashboards from BambooHR Data in Amazon QuickSight

Amazon QuickSight allows users to build interactive dashboards in the cloud. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get direct access to BambooHR data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for BambooHR in Connect Server and build dashboards in Amazon QuickSight with access to BambooHR data.

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

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

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the BambooHR Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\bamboohr.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for BambooHR (see below).

   BambooHR API Profile Settings

   In order to authenticate to BambooHR, you'll need to provide your API Key. To generate an API key, log in and click your name in the upper right-hand corner of any page to get to the user context menu. If you have sufficient permissions, there will be an "API Keys" option in that menu to go to the page, where you can create a new API Key. Additionally, you will need to set the Domain, found in the domain name of your BambooHR account. For example if your BambooHR account is acmeinc.bamboohr.com, then the Domain should be 'acmeinc'. Set both the API Key and Domain in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

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 BambooHR data from Quicksight.

Import BambooHR Data into SPICE and Create Interactive Dashboards

The steps below outline creating a new data set based on the virtual BambooHR database in Connect Server, importing the dataset into SPICE, and building a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Amazon QuickSight and on the left panel click "Datasets"
2. Click "New dataset," select SQL Server as the data source, configure the connection to your Connect Server instance, and click "Create data source"
3. Select a table to visualize (or submit a custom SQL query for your data) and click Select.
4. Select "Import to SPICE for quicker analytics" and click "Visualize."
5. Select fields to visualize as well as a visual type.

Schedule Refreshes for SPICE Data Sets

QuickSight users can schedule refreshes for data sets that are imported into SPICE, ensuring that data being analyzed is only as old as the most recent refresh.

1. Navigate to the QuickSight home page.
2. Click "Manage data."
3. Select the data set you wish to refresh.
4. Click "Schedule refresh."
5. Click Create, configure the refresh settings (time zone, repeat frequency, and starting datetime), and click Create.

SQL Access to BambooHR Data from Applications

At this point, you have a direct connection to BambooHR data from your Amazon QuickSight dashboard. You can create new visualizations, build interactive dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining SQL access to data from more than 250 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from applications like Amazon QuickSight, refer to our Connect Server page.