Build Blackbaud FE NXT-Connected Dashboards in Redash

Redash lets you connect and query your data sources, build dashboards to visualize data and share them with your company. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Blackbaud FE NXT data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Blackbaud FE NXT and build visualizations from Blackbaud FE NXT data in Redash.

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

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

   Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

   See the Getting Started guide in the CData driver documentation for more information.

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 Blackbaud FE NXT data from Redash.

Visualize Blackbaud FE NXT Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual Blackbaud FE NXT database in Connect Server and building a simple visualization from the data.

Create a New Data Source

1. Log into Redash, click on your profile and click "Data Sources"
2. Click the " New Data Source" button
3. Select "Microsoft SQL Server" as the Data Source Type
4. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
   • Name: Name the data source (e.g. Blackbaud FE NXT (CData Connect))
   • Host: The full URL to your CData Connect instance (e.g. https://connect_server_url)
   • Port: The port of the CData Connect SQL Server endpoint (e.g. 1433)
   • User: A CData Connect user
   • Password: The password for the above user
   • Database name: The name of the virtual database for Blackbaud FE NXT (e.g. FinancialEdgeNXT1)
   • Click the checkbox to Use SSQL
5. Click Create
6. Click the "Test Connection" button to ensure you have configured the connection properly

With the new Data Source created, we are ready to visualize our Blackbaud FE NXT data.

Create a Blackbaud FE NXT Data Visualization

1. Click Create -> New Query
2. Select the newly created Data Source (you can explore the data structure in the New Query wizard)
3. Write a SQL statement to retrieve the data, for example:
   SELECT AccountId, AccountNumber FROM Accounts
4. Click the "Execute" button to load Blackbaud FE NXT data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from Blackbaud FE NXT data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to Blackbaud FE NXT Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Blackbaud FE NXT data from Redash. You can create new visualizations, build dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining SQL access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like Redash, refer to our Connect Server page.