Create Dashboards and Visualize Live QuickBooks Data in Geckoboard
Geckoboard is a business intelligence tool that simplifies the visualization of key performance indicators (KPIs) by creating live dashboards. It allows teams to consolidate data from various sources - such as Salesforce, Snowflake, Google Analytics, and spreadsheets - and display it in a visually engaging and easy-to-understand format. Designed for simplicity and clarity, Geckoboard helps businesses monitor performance, track goals, and make data-driven decisions.
When used with CData Connect AI, you gain instant, cloud-to-cloud access to QuickBooks data from Geckoboard for dashboards, monitoring, visualizations, and more. This article explains how to connect to QuickBooks and create visualizations using QuickBooks data in Geckoboard.
About QuickBooks Data Integration
CData simplifies access and integration of live QuickBooks data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:
- Access both local and remote company files.
- Connect across editions and regions: QuickBooks Premier, Professional, Enterprise, and Simple Start edition 2002+, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and UK editions from 2003+.
- Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like voiding or clearing transactions, merging lists, searching entities, and more.
Customers regularly integrate their QuickBooks data with preferred tools, like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel, and integrate QuickBooks data into their database or data warehouse.
Getting Started
CData Connect AI offers a seamless SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for QuickBooks, enabling you to effortlessly create dashboards and visualizations using live QuickBooks data in Geckoboard. While building visualizations, Geckoboard requires SQL queries to retrieve the necessary data. With built-in optimized data processing, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (such as filters and JOINs) directly to QuickBooks, utilizing server-side processing for fast and efficient data retrieval of QuickBooks data.
Configure QuickBooks connectivity for Geckoboard
Connectivity to QuickBooks from Geckoboard is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with QuickBooks data from Geckoboard, we start by creating and configuring a QuickBooks connection.
- Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
- Select "QuickBooks" from the Add Connection panel
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Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to QuickBooks.
QuickBooks runs on-premises, so Connect AI requires the Connect Gateway to reach it. Install and start the gateway on the same machine (or network) as QuickBooks, then set the URL connection property to the Remote Connector address (e.g., http://remotehost:8166) and enter your User and Password.
- Click Save & Test
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Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add QuickBooks Connection page and update the User-based 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.
- Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
- On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
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Give the PAT a name and click Create.
- 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 QuickBooks data from Geckoboard.
Connect live QuickBooks data in Geckoboard
Follow these steps to establish a connection from Geckoboard to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server API.
- Log into Geckoboard
- Add a custom dashboard name and click Add widget
- Search for "Databases" in the Connect your data search bar
- Select SQL Server as the Database type
- Fill in the connection details:
- Connection name: enter a name for the connection to CData Connect AI
- Host: enter the Virtual SQL Server endpoint: tds.cdata.com
- Port: : enter 14333
- Database name: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, QuickBooks1)
- Username: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected]
- Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page
- Click Connect
After successfully configuring your connection, you can query and visualize your QuickBooks data.
Visualize live QuickBooks data in Geckoboard
To visualize live QuickBooks data in Geckoboard, follow these steps:
- Write an SQL query to select the specific QuickBooks data needed for visualization in Paste your SQL query compiler screen
- Choose the visualization type (Line Chart, Bar Chart, or Column Chart) that best suits your business requirements
- The selected chart will be displayed on Geckoboard
- Click the menu (three dots in the top-right corner of the graph) and select Edit to modify the SQL query or set a refresh interval for the chart
Depending on your use case, you can also generate the desired SQL query using the Playground or Query Builder features of CData Connect AI
Live access to QuickBooks data from cloud applications
At this stage, you have established a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live QuickBooks data in Geckoboard. This enables you to create dashboards to monitor and visualize your data seamlessly.
For more details on accessing live data from over 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources through cloud applications like Geckoboard, visit our Connect AI page.