Create Office 365 Dashboards in Bold BI

Bold BI allows you to create, share, and collaborate on interactive BI dashboards. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to Office 365 data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Office 365 and build reports from Office 365 data in Bold BI.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Office 365, allowing you to easily build reports from live Office 365 data in Bold BI — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Bold BI 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 Office 365, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Office 365 data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Office 365 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 "Office 365" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Office 365.

   Office 365 uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate requests, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and OAuthCallbackURL by registering an app with Office 365. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.

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 Office 365 data from Bold BI.

Visualize Live Office 365 Data in Bold BI

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Bold BI to create a new Office 365 data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into your Bold BI instance, click the data sources tab, create a new data source, and choose the SQL Server connector.
2. Choose the basic configuration and set the connection properties:
   • Name: Name your connection
   • Server name: Your Connect Server instance (CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
   • Port: 1433
   • Username: Your Connect Server username
   • Password: Your Connect Server password
   • Mode: Choose Live to query Office 365 on-demand or choose Extract to load the data into Bold BI
   • Database: Choose the database you created from the drop-down menu (office365db)
3. Click Connect
4. Select the table to visualize and drag it onto the workspace.
5. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
6. Click the gear icon for the visualization to configure the visualization properties and assign columns to the visualization.

SQL Access to Office 365 Data from Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Office 365 data from your Bold BI workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Office 365 data.

To get SQL data access to 200+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your applications, see the CData Connect page.