Build Drift-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 Drift data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Drift and build visualizations from Drift data in Redash.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Drift, allowing you to easily build reports from live Drift 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 Drift, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Drift data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Drift 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 "Drift" from Available Data Sources.
3. 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.
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 Drift data from Redash.

Visualize Drift Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual Drift 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. Drift (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 Drift (e.g. API1)
   • 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 Drift data.

Create a Drift 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 Id, DisplayName FROM Contacts WHERE LastName = 'Stark'
4. Click the "Execute" button to load Drift data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from Drift data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to Drift Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Drift 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.