Create Shippo-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 AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to Shippo data to create visualizations, reports, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on connecting to Shippo within Connect AI and creating visualizations using Shippo data in Klipfolio.

CData Connect AI offers a direct cloud-to-cloud interface for Shippo, enabling you to construct reports from real-time Shippo 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 AI efficiently directs all supported SQL operations (such as filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Shippo, harnessing server-side processing to swiftly retrieve the requested Shippo data data.

Configure Shippo Connectivity for Klipfolio

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "Shippo" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Shippo.

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

   Shippo API Profile Settings

   In order to authenticate to Shippo, you will need an API Key. You can find this API key under 'Settings' > 'API' > 'Generate Token'. After generating your key, set it to the APIKey in ProfileSettings connection property.

   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Shippo 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.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the 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 and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Shippo data from Klipfolio.

Connect to Shippo from Klipfolio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Klipfolio to create a new Shippo 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., API1)
   • Driver: MS SQL
   • Username: a Connect AI 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 Shippo 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 Shippo Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a Metric built from live Shippo 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 Shippo data.

To get SQL data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI.