Explore Geographical Relationships in Epicor Kinetic Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Epicor Kinetic is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Epicor Kinetic data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Epicor Kinetic data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Epicor Kinetic

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

To successfully connect to your ERP instance, you must specify the following connection properties:

• Url:the URL of the server hosting your ERP instance. For example, https://myserver.EpicorSaaS.com
• ERPInstance: the name of your ERP instance.
• User: the username of your account.
• Password: the password of your account.
• Service: the service you want to retrieve data from. For example, BaqSvc.

In addition, you may also set the optional connection properties:

• ApiKey: An optional key that may be required for connection to some services depending on your account configuration.
• ApiVersion: Defaults to v1. May be set to v2 to use the newer Epicor API.
• Company: Required if you set the ApiVersion to v2.

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.

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.

Import Epicor Kinetic Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Epicor Kinetic data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Epicor Kinetic Data

After importing the Epicor Kinetic data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Epicor Kinetic entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.