Create Sage 300 Dashboards in Bold BI

Bold BI allows you to create, share, and collaborate on interactive BI dashboards. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to Sage 300 data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Sage 300 and build reports from Sage 300 data in Bold BI.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Sage 300, allowing you to easily build reports from live Sage 300 data in Bold BI — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Bold BI 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 300, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Sage 300 data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Sage 300 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 300" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Sage 300.

   Sage 300 requires some initial setup in order to communicate over the Sage 300 Web API.

   • Set up the security groups for the Sage 300 user. Give the Sage 300 user access to the option under Security Groups (per each module required).
   • Edit both web.config files in the /Online/Web and /Online/WebApi folders; change the key AllowWebApiAccessForAdmin to true. Restart the webAPI app-pool for the settings to take.
   • Once the user access is configured, click https://server/Sage300WebApi/ to ensure access to the web API.

   Authenticate to Sage 300 using Basic authentication.

   Connect Using Basic Authentication

   You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to Sage 300. Note that the provider reuses the session opened by Sage 300 using cookies. This means that your credentials are used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from Sage 300 are used for authentication.

   • Url: Set this to the url of the server hosting Sage 300. Construct a URL for the Sage 300 Web API as follows: {protocol}://{host-application-path}/v{version}/{tenant}/ For example, http://localhost/Sage300WebApi/v1.0/-/.
   • User: Set this to the username of your account.
   • Password: Set this to the password of your account.
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 300 data from Bold BI.

Visualize Live Sage 300 Data in Bold BI

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Bold BI to create a new Sage 300 data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into your Bold BI instance, click the data sources tab, create a new data source, and choose the SQL Server connector.
2. Choose the basic configuration and set the connection properties:
   • Name: Name your connection
   • Server name: Your Connect Server instance (CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
   • Port: 1433
   • Username: Your Connect Server username
   • Password: Your Connect Server password
   • Mode: Choose Live to query Sage 300 on-demand or choose Extract to load the data into Bold BI
   • Database: Choose the database you created from the drop-down menu (sage300db)
3. Click Connect
4. Select the table to visualize and drag it onto the workspace.
5. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
6. Click the gear icon for the visualization to configure the visualization properties and assign columns to the visualization.

SQL Access to Sage 300 Data from Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Sage 300 data from your Bold BI workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Sage 300 data.

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