Build Dashboards with Browse AI Data in Dundas BI

The CData ODBC Driver for Browse AI enables access to live data from Browse AI under the ODBC standard, allowing you work with Browse AI data in a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and directly, using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to connect to Browse AI data as a generic ODBC Data Provider and create charts, reports, and dashboards based on Browse AI data in Dundas BI.

Connect to Browse AI Data

1. 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.
   
   

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

   BrowseAI API Profile Settings

   BrowseAI is a web scraping and automation platform that allows you to train robots to extract and monitor data from websites. Authentication is performed using an API key that is sent as a Bearer token in the Authorization header.

   The BrowseAI API key has the format {userId}:{apiKey}, where both parts are UUIDs separated by a colon. This full string is provided as a single value in the BrowseAI dashboard.

   To obtain your API key:

   1. Log in to your BrowseAI account at https://app.browse.ai
   2. Navigate to Settings in the dashboard
   3. Locate the API section
   4. Copy the full API key string displayed (format: userId:apiKey)

   After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

   Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

   • APIKey: Set this to your BrowseAI API key (format: userId:apiKey).

   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.

2. Open the Dundas BI interface, open the menu, and click New Data Connector.
3. 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 Browse AI Data to a Dashboard

You are now ready to create a dashboard with Browse AI data.

1. Navigate to the Home page.
2. Click Explore Data.

3. Expand the appropriate Data Connector.
4. 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.

5. Click Re-visualize from the menu bar and select the appropriate visualization for the data.

6. Click Add To New Dashboard to add the visualization to a new dashboard.

7. Configure the dashboard, creating dynamic visualizations of Browse AI data.