Create Sage US-Connected Visualizations in Klipfolio

Klipfolio is an online dashboard platform for building real-time business dashboards for your team or your clients. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to Sage US data for visualizations, reports, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Sage US in Connect Server and build visualizations from Sage US data in Klipfolio.

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

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

   The Application Id and Company Name connection string options are required to connect to Sage as a data source. You can obtain an Application Id by contacting Sage directly to request access to the Sage 50 SDK.

   Sage must be installed on the machine. The Sage.Peachtree.API.dll and Sage.Peachtree.API.Resolver.dll assemblies are required. These assemblies are installed with Sage in C:/Program Files/Sage/Peachtree/API/. Additionally, the Sage SDK requires .NET Framework 4.0 and is only compatible with 32-bit applications. To use the Sage SDK in Visual Studio, set the Platform Target property to "x86" in Project -> Properties -> Build.

   You must authorize the application to access company data: To authorize your application to access Sage, restart the Sage application, open the company you want to access, and connect with your application. You will then be prompted to set access permissions for the application in the resulting dialog.

   While the compiled executable will require authorization only once, during development you may need to follow this process to reauthorize a new build. To avoid restarting the Sage application when developing with Visual Studio, click Build -> Configuration Manager and uncheck "Build" for your project.

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 Sage US data from Klipfolio.

Connect to Sage US in Klipfolio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Klipfolio to create a new Sage US data source.

1. Open Klipfolio
2. Click in Data Feeds on the left panel to add a new data source.
3. Search for and select MS SQL as the Service.
4. Click "Create a custom MSSQL data source"
5. Configure the data source by setting the SQL Server connection properties:
   • Host: your instance (e.g., CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
   • Port: 1433
   • Database: your database (e.g., Sage50US1)
   • Driver: MS SQL
   • Username: your Connect Server username
   • Password: your Connect Server password
   • SQL Query: any query to retrieve data (e.g., SELECT * FROM Customer)
   • Select the checkbox to "Include column headers"
6. Click "Get data" to preview the Sage US data before building a data model.

Build a Data Model

After retrieving the data, click "Continue." In the new window, configure your data model.

1. Confirm that the model includes all columns you wish to work with
2. Name your model
3. (optional) Set the Description
4. Set "Header in row" to 1
5. Click the toggle to "Exclude data before row" and set the value to 2
6. Click "Save data feed"

Create a Klip

With the data modeled, we are ready to create a Klip (or visualization) of the data to be used in the Klipfolio platform for dashboards, reporting, and more.

1. Click "Add Metric"
2. Select a measure, placed on the y-axis, to track.
3. Select up to five dimensions/columns, for the x-axis, that you wish to visualize.
4. Click "Save metric"

SQL Access to Sage US Data from Applications

Now you have a Klip built from live Sage US data. You can add it to a new dashboard, share, and more. Easily create more data sources and new visualizations, produce reports, and more — all without replicating Sage US data.

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