Discover how a bimodal integration strategy can address the major data management challenges facing your organization today.
Get the Report →Create Apps from Drift Data in Qlik Sense Cloud
Use the CData Connect Server to create an OData API for Drift data and build apps from live Drift data in Qlik Sense Cloud.
Qlik Sense Cloud allows you to create and share data visualizations and interact with information in new ways. The CData Connect Server creates a virtual database for Drift and can be used to generate an OData API (natively consumable in Qlik Sense Cloud) for Drift. By pairing Qlik Sense Cloud with the CData Connect Server, you get live connectivity to all of your SaaS and cloud-based Big Data and NoSQL sources — no need to migrate your data or write your integrations. Simply connect to Connect Server from Qlik Sense Cloud as you would any other REST service and get instant, live access to your Drift data.
In this article, we walk through two connections:
- Connecting to Drift in Connect Server
- Connecting to Connect Server from Qlik Sense Cloud to create a model and build a simple dashboard
Configure Connect Server to Connect to Drift
To connect to Drift data from Qlik Sense Cloud, you need to configure Drift access from your Connect Server instance. This means creating a user, connecting to Drift, adding OData endpoints, and (optionally) configuring CORS.
Add a Connect Server User
Create a Connect Server User to connect to Drift from Qlik Sense Cloud.
- Click Users -> Add
- Configure a User
- Click Save Changes and make note of the Authtoken for the new user
Connect to Drift from Connect Server
CData Connect Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.
- Open Connect Server and click Connections
- Select "Drift" from Available Data Sources
- Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Drift.
Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Drift Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Drift.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Drift (see below).
Drift API Profile Settings
Drift uses OAuth-based authentication.
You must first register an application here: https://dev.drift.com. Your app will be assigned a client ID and a client secret. Set these in your connection string via the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret properties. More information on setting up an OAuth application can be found at https://devdocs.drift.com/docs/.
After setting the following options in the ProfileSettings connection property, you are ready to connect:
- AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
- OAuthClientId: Set this to the Client Id that is specified in your app settings.
- OAuthClientSecret: Set this to Client Secret that is specified in your app settings.
- CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app settings.
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage the process to obtain the OAuthAccessToken.
- Click Save Changes
- Click Privileges -> Add, and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions (SELECT is all that is required for Reveal)
Add Drift OData Endpoints in Connect Server
After connecting to Drift, create OData Endpoint for the desired table(s).
- Click OData -> Tables -> Add Tables
- Select the Drift database
- Select the table(s) you wish to work with and click Next
- (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
- Save the settings
(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
When accessing and connecting to multiple domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in OData -> Settings.
- Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
- Allow all domains without '*': ON
- Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
- Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization
Save the changes to the settings.
Create a Qlik Sense App from Drift Data
With the connection to Drift and OData endpoints created, we are ready to add Drift data to a Qlik Sense app for visualizations, analytics, reporting, and more.
Create a New App and Upload Data
- Log into your Qlik Sense instance and click the button to create a new app
- Name and configure the new app and click "Create"
- In the workspace, click to open the new app
- Click to add data from files and other sources
- Select the REST connector and set the configuration properties. For the most part, you will use the default values, with the following exceptions:
- URL: Set this to the API endpoint for your Drift table, using the @CSV URL parameter to ensure a CSV response (i.e. CONNECT_SERVER_URL/api.rsc/API_Contacts?@CSV)
- Authentication Schema: Set this to "Basic"
- User Name: Set this to the user name you configured above
- Password: Set this to the Authtoken for the above user
- Click "Create" to query Connect Server for the Drift data
- Check "CSV has header" and under "Tables," select "CSV_source"
- Select columns and click "Add data"
Generate Insights or Customize Your App
With the data loaded into Qlik Sense, you are ready to begin discovering insights. Click "Generate insights" to let Qlik analyze your data. Otherwise, you can build custom visualizations, reports, and dashboards based on your Drift data.
More Information & Free Trial
Now, you have created a simple but powerful dashboard from live Drift data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Drift (and more than 200 other data sources), visit the Connect Server page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live Drift data in Qlik Sense Cloud.