How to connect Amazon QuickSight to Printful Data

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create a connection to Printful data in CData Connect AI and insert Printful 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 Printful data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Printful in Connect AI and build dashboards in Amazon QuickSight with access to Printful data.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Printful, allowing you to allowing build visualizations from Printful data in Amazon QuickSight. By importing your Printful 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 Printful Connectivity for Amazon QuickSight

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

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

    Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Printful Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Printful.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Printful (see below).

    Printful API Profile Settings

    In order to authenticate to Printful, you'll need to provide your API Key. To get your API Key, first go to 'Settings' then 'Stores'. Select the Store you would like to connect to, then click the 'Add API Access' button to generate an API Key. Set the API Key in the ProfileSettings property to connect.

    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Printful 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 Printful data from Amazon QuickSight.

Import Printful Data into SPICE and Create Interactive Dashboards

The steps below outline creating a new data set based on the connection to Printful 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 Printful Data from Cloud Applications

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

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