Create Cvent-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 AI, you gain immediate access to Cvent data for business dashboards. This article outlines the process of connecting to Cvent using Connect AI and creating a basic dashboard from Cvent data within Grafana.

CData Connect AI offers a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Cvent, enabling the creation of dashboards directly from live Cvent 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 AI efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Cvent. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Cvent data.

Configure Cvent Connectivity for Grafana

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "Cvent" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Cvent.

   Before you can authenticate to Cvent, you must create a workspace and an OAuth application.

   Creating a Workspace

   To create a workspace:

   1. Sign into Cvent and navigate to App Switcher (the blue button in the upper right corner of the page) >> Admin.
   2. In the Admin menu, navigate to Integrations >> REST API.
   3. A new tab launches for Developer Management. Click on Manage API Access in the new tab.
   4. Create a Workspace and name it. Select the scopes you would like your developers to have access to. Scopes control what data domains the developer can access.
      • Choose All to allow developers to choose any scope, and any future scopes added to the REST API.
      • Choose Custom to limit the scopes developers can choose for their OAuth apps to selected scopes. To access all tables exposed by the driver, you need to set the following scopes:

        event/attendees:read	event/attendees:write	event/contacts:read
        event/contacts:write	event/custom-fields:read	event/custom-fields:write
        event/events:read	event/events:write	event/sessions:delete
        event/sessions:read	event/sessions:write	event/speakers:delete
        event/speakers:read	event/speakers:write	budget/budget-items:read
        budget/budget-items:write	exhibitor/exhibitors:read	exhibitor/exhibitors:write
        survey/surveys:read	survey/surveys:write

   Creating an OAuth Application

   After you have set up a Workspace and invited them, developers can sign up and create a custom OAuth app. See the Creating a Custom OAuth Application section in the Help documentation for more information.

   Connecting to Cvent

   After creating an OAuth application, set the following connection properties to connect to Cvent:

   • InitiateOAuth: GETANDREFRESH. Used to automatically get and refresh the OAuthAccessToken.
   • OAuthClientId: The Client ID associated with the OAuth application. You can find this on the Applications page in the Cvent Developer Portal.
   • OAuthClientSecret: The Client secret associated with the OAuth application. You can find this on the Applications page in the Cvent Developer Portal.
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Cvent Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the 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 and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Cvent data from Grafana.

Visualize Live Cvent Data in Grafana

To establish a connection from Grafana to the CData Connect AI 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 Sources > 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 AI data source you want to connect to (for example, Cvent1).
   • Username: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI 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 Cvent, you can start building dashboards on Cvent 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 hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today!