Integrate Respond.io Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Publish reports based on Respond.io data in the Pentaho BI tool.

The CData JDBC driver for Respond.io data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to Respond.io data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on Respond.io data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

  1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
  2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.
  3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new Respond.io connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

    • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:api: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

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

      Respondio API Profile Settings

      Respond.io uses API key authentication. To obtain an API key:

      1. Log in to your Respond.io account.
      2. Navigate to Settings in your workspace.
      3. Select Developer under the Integrations section.
      4. Copy the API key displayed on the page.

      After obtaining your API key, set the following connection properties:

      • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.

      Set the following in the ProfileSettings connection property:

      • APIKey: Set this to your Respond.io API key.

      Built-in Connection String Designer

      For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Respond.io JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

      
      java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar
      

      Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

      Using the built-in connection string designer to generate a JDBC URL (Salesforce is shown.)

      When you configure the JDBC URL, 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.

      Below is a typical JDBC URL:

      jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Respondio.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings='APIKey=your_api_key';
    • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.
    • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
    • Password: The password to authenticate with.
    Required connection properties defined in the JDBC URL. (Salesforce is shown.)

Add Respond.io Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with Respond.io data.

  1. Add the Respond.io source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

  2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

    SELECT Id, Email FROM Contacts WHERE Identifier = 'id:438180634'
    The query to retrieve data, specified in the JDBC data source configuration wizard. (Salesforce is shown.)
  3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the Contacts table.
  4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.
A chart generated from up-to-date data. (Salesforce is shown.)

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Respond.io with the API Driver

Connect to Respond.io