Create SAP Ariba Procurement-Connected Visualizations in Klipfolio

Klipfolio is an online dashboard platform designed to create real-time business dashboards, whether for your team or clients. When combined with CData Connect Cloud, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to SAP Ariba Procurement data to create visualizations, reports, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on connecting to SAP Ariba Procurement within Connect Cloud and creating visualizations using SAP Ariba Procurement data in Klipfolio.

CData Connect Cloud offers a direct cloud-to-cloud interface for SAP Ariba Procurement, enabling you to construct reports from real-time SAP Ariba Procurement data data within Klipfolio—without the need for data replication to a database natively supported by Klipfolio. While building visualizations, Klipfolio generates SQL queries to fetch data. With optimized data processing capabilities out of the box, CData Connect Cloud efficiently directs all supported SQL operations (such as filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to SAP Ariba Procurement, harnessing server-side processing to swiftly retrieve the requested SAP Ariba Procurement data data.

Configure SAP Ariba Procurement Connectivity for Klipfolio

Connectivity to SAP Ariba Procurement from Klipfolio is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with SAP Ariba Procurement data from Klipfolio, we start by creating and configuring a SAP Ariba Procurement connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "SAP Ariba Procurement" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SAP Ariba Procurement.

   In order to connect with SAP Ariba Procurement, set the following:

   • ANID: Your Ariba Network ID.
   • ANID: Specify which API you would like the provider to retrieve SAP Ariba data from. Select the Buyer or Supplier API based on your business role (possible values are PurchaseOrdersBuyerAPIV1 or PurchaseOrdersSupplierAPIV1).
   • Environment: Indicate whether you are connecting to a test or production environment (possible values are TEST or PRODUCTION).

   Authenticating with OAuth

   After setting connection properties, you need to configure OAuth connectivity to authenticate.

   • Set AuthScheme to OAuthClient.
   • Register an application with the service to obtain the APIKey, OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret.

     For more information on creating an OAuth application, refer to the Help documentation.

   Automatic OAuth

   After setting the following, you are ready to connect:

   APIKey: The Application key in your app settings. OAuthClientId: The OAuth Client Id in your app settings. OAuthClientSecret: The OAuth Secret in your app settings.

   When you connect, the provider automatically completes the OAuth process:

   1. The provider obtains an access token from SAP Ariba and uses it to request data.
   2. The provider refreshes the access token automatically when it expires.
   3. The OAuth values are saved in memory relative to the location specified in OAuthSettingsLocation.
   
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add SAP Ariba Procurement Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
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, you are ready to connect to SAP Ariba Procurement data Klipfolio.

Connect to SAP Ariba Procurement from Klipfolio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Klipfolio to create a new SAP Ariba Procurement data source.

1. Open Klipfolio
2. Click in Data Sources to add a new data source
3. Search for and select MSSQL as the Service
4. Click "Create a custom MSSQL data source"
5. Configure the data source by setting the MSSQL connection properties:
   • Host: tds.cdata.com
   • Port: 14333
   • Database: your database (e.g., SAPAribaProcurement1)
   • Driver: MS SQL
   • Username: a Connect Cloud user (e.g. [email protected])
   • Password: the above user's PAT
   • SQL Query: any query to retrieve data (e.g. SELECT * FROM Orders )
   • Select the checkbox to "Include column headers"
   • Select the checkbox to "Use SSL/TLS"
   
6. Click "Get data" to preview the SAP Ariba Procurement data before building a data model.

Build a Data Model

After retrieving the data, click the checkbox to "Model your data" and 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 and Exit"

Create a Metric

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

1. Click "Create metrics"
2. Select a Data source
3. Select a Metric value and default aggregation
4. Select Segmentation(s)
5. Select a Date & time
6. Select a Data shape
7. Configure the Display settings
8. Click Save
9. Navigate to your Metric and further configure the visualization

SQL Access to SAP Ariba Procurement Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a Metric built from live SAP Ariba Procurement 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 SAP Ariba Procurement data.

To get SQL data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect Cloud.