How to connect Amazon QuickSight to PingOne Data

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create a connection to PingOne data in CData Connect AI and insert PingOne data into Amazon QuickSight SPICE to build interactive dashboards.

Amazon QuickSight allows users to build interactive dashboards in the cloud. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get cloud-to-cloud access to PingOne data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to PingOne in Connect AI and build dashboards in Amazon QuickSight with access to PingOne data.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for PingOne, allowing you to allowing build visualizations from PingOne data in Amazon QuickSight. By importing your PingOne data into the Amazon QuickSight "Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine" (SPICE), you can leverage the powerful data processing features of the Amazon ecosystem to build responsive dashboards. And with the ability to schedule refreshes of the data stored in SPICE, you control how up-to-date your dashboards are.

Configure PingOne Connectivity for Amazon QuickSight

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
  2. Adding a Connection
  3. Select "PingOne" from the Add Connection panel
  4. Selecting a data source
  5. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to PingOne.

    To connect to PingOne, configure these properties:

    • Region: The region where the data for your PingOne organization is being hosted.
    • AuthScheme: The type of authentication to use when connecting to PingOne.
    • Either WorkerAppEnvironmentId (required when using the default PingOne domain) or AuthorizationServerURL, configured as described below.

    Configuring WorkerAppEnvironmentId

    WorkerAppEnvironmentId is the ID of the PingOne environment in which your Worker application resides. This parameter is used only when the environment is using the default PingOne domain (auth.pingone). It is configured after you have created the custom OAuth application you will use to authenticate to PingOne, as described in Creating a Custom OAuth Application in the Help documentation.

    First, find the value for this property:

    1. From the home page of your PingOne organization, move to the navigation sidebar and click Environments.
    2. Find the environment in which you have created your custom OAuth/Worker application (usually Administrators), and click Manage Environment. The environment's home page displays.
    3. In the environment's home page navigation sidebar, click Applications.
    4. Find your OAuth or Worker application details in the list.
    5. Copy the value in the Environment ID field. It should look similar to:
      WorkerAppEnvironmentId='11e96fc7-aa4d-4a60-8196-9acf91424eca'

    Now set WorkerAppEnvironmentId to the value of the Environment ID field.

    Configuring AuthorizationServerURL

    AuthorizationServerURL is the base URL of the PingOne authorization server for the environment where your application is located. This property is only used when you have set up a custom domain for the environment, as described in the PingOne platform API documentation. See Custom Domains.

    Authenticating to PingOne with OAuth

    PingOne supports both OAuth and OAuthClient authentication. In addition to performing the configuration steps described above, there are two more steps to complete to support OAuth or OAuthCliet authentication:

    • Create and configure a custom OAuth application, as described in Creating a Custom OAuth Application in the Help documentation.
    • To ensure that the driver can access the entities in Data Model, confirm that you have configured the correct roles for the admin user/worker application you will be using, as described in Administrator Roles in the Help documentation.
    • Set the appropriate properties for the authscheme and authflow of your choice, as described in the following subsections.

    OAuth (Authorization Code grant)

    Set AuthScheme to OAuth.

    Desktop Applications

    Get and Refresh the OAuth Access Token

    After setting the following, you are ready to connect:

    • InitiateOAuth: GETANDREFRESH. To avoid the need to repeat the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken each time you connect, use InitiateOAuth.
    • OAuthClientId: The Client ID you obtained when you created your custom OAuth application.
    • OAuthClientSecret: The Client Secret you obtained when you created your custom OAuth application.
    • CallbackURL: The redirect URI you defined when you registered your custom OAuth application. For example: https://localhost:3333

    When you connect, the driver opens PingOne's OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application. The driver then completes the OAuth process:

    1. The driver obtains an access token from PingOne and uses it to request data.
    2. The OAuth values are saved in the location specified in OAuthSettingsLocation, to be persisted across connections.

    The driver refreshes the access token automatically when it expires.

    For other OAuth methods, including Web Applications, Headless Machines, or Client Credentials Grant, refer to the Help documentation.

    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  6. Click Save & Test
  7. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add PingOne Connection page and update the User-based permissions. Updating 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. Creating a new PAT
  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 PingOne data from Amazon QuickSight.

Import PingOne Data into SPICE and Create Interactive Dashboards

The steps below outline creating a new data set based on the connection to PingOne in Connect AI, importing the dataset into SPICE, and building a simple visualization from the data.

  1. Log into Amazon QuickSight and click "Manage data."
  2. Click "Now data set," select SQL Server as the data source, configure the connection to your Connect AI instance, and click "Create data source." Connecting to Connect AI as a QuickSight data set.
  3. Select a table to visualize (or subait a custom SQL query for your data). Selecting a Table to visualize.
  4. Click "Edit/Preview data" to customize the data set.
  5. Select "Import to SPICE for quicker analytics" and click "Visualize." Importing data to SPICE for quicker analytics.
  6. Select fields to visualize and a visual type. Visualizing data in QuickSight via Connect AI (Salesforce is shown).

Schedule Refreshes for SPICE Data Sets

QuickSight users can schedule refreshes for data sets that are imported into SPICE, ensuring that data being analyzed is only as old as the most recent refresh.

  1. Navigate to the QuickSight home page.
  2. Click "Manage data."
  3. Select the data set you wish to refresh.
  4. Click "Schedule refresh."
  5. Click Create, configure the refresh settings (time zone, repeat frequency, and starting datetime), and click Create. Scheduling a refreshing of the data imported into SPICE.

Live Access to PingOne Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to PingOne data from your Amazon QuickSight dashboard. You can create new visualizations, build interactive dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining live access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like Amazon QuickSight, refer to our Connect AI page.

Ready to get started?

Learn more about CData Connect AI or sign up for free trial access:

Free Trial