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Get the Report →Connect to Live Smartsheet Data in MicroStrategy through CData Connect Cloud
Create a live connection to Smartsheet Data in CData Connect Cloud and connect to your Smartsheet data from MicroStrategy.
MicroStrategy is an analytics and mobility platform that enables data-driven innovation. When you pair MicroStrategy with CData Connect Cloud, you gain database-like access to live Smartsheet data from MicroStrategy, expanding your reporting and analytics capabilities. In this article, we walk through connecting to Smartsheet in Connect Cloud and connecting to Connect Cloud in MicroStrategy to create a simple visualization of Smartsheet data.
As a cloud-based integration platform, Connect Cloud is ideal for working with cloud-based BI and analytics tools. With no servers to configure or data proxies to set up, you can simply use the web-based UI to create a live connection to Smartsheet and connect from MicroStrategy to start performing analytics based on live Smartsheet data.
About Smartsheet Data Integration
CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Smartsheet. Customers use CData connectivity to:
- Read and write attachments, columns, comments and discussions.
- View the data in individuals cells, report on cell history, and more.
- Perform Smartsheet-specific actions like deleting or downloading attachments, creating, copying, deleting, or moving sheets, and moving or copying rows to another sheet.
Users frequently integrate Smartsheet with analytics tools such as Tableau, Crystal Reports, and Excel. Others leverage our tools to replicate Smartsheet data to databases or data warehouses.
Getting Started
Configure Smartsheet Connectivity for Microstrategy
Connectivity to Smartsheet from Microstrategy is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Smartsheet data from Microstrategy, we start by creating and configuring a Smartsheet connection.
- Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
- Select "Smartsheet" from the Add Connection panel
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Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Smartsheet.
Smartsheet uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to register an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.
However, for testing purposes you can instead use the Personal Access Token you get when you create an application; set this to the OAuthAccessToken connection property.
- Click Create & Test
- Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Smartsheet 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.
- Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
- Oa the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
- Give your PAT a name and click Create.
- 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 Smartsheet data from MicroStrategy.
Connect to and Visualize Smartsheet Data Using MicroStrategy
You can connect to Smartsheet in MicroStrategy by adding a data source based on the native SQL Server functionality. Once you have created a data source, you can build dynamic visualizations of Smartsheet data in MicroStrategy.
- Open MicroStrategy and select your account.
- Click Add External Data, select Databases, and use Select Tables as the Import Option.
- In the Import from Tables wizard, click to add a new Data Source.
- Select "SQL Server" in the Database menu and select "SQL Server 2017" in the Version menu.
- Sat the connection properties as follows:
- Server Name: tds.cdata.com
- Port Number: 14333
- Database Name: the name of your Smartsheet connection (e.g. Smartsheet1)
- User: a Connect Cloud user
- Password: the PAT for your Connect Cloud user
- Data Source Name: a name for the new external data source, like "CData Cloud Smartsheet"
- Expand the menu for the new data source and choose "Edit Catalog Options"
- Edit the "SQL statement retrieve columns ..." query to include TABLE_SCHEMA = '#?Schema_Name?#' in the WHERE clause, and click Apply and then OK (the complete query is below).
SELECT DISTINCT TABLE_SCHEMA NAME_SPACE, TABLE_NAME TAB_NAME, COLUMN_NAME COL_NAME, (CASE WHEN (DATA_TYPE LIKE '%char' AND (CHARACTER_SET_NAME='utf8' OR CHARACTER_SET_NAME='usc2')) THEN CONCAT('a',DATA_TYPE) ELSE DATA_TYPE END) DATA_TYPE, CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH DATA_LEN, NUMERIC_PRECISION DATA_PREC, NUMERIC_SCALE DATA_SCALE FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME IN (#TABLE_LIST#) AND TABLE_SCHEMA='#?Schema_Name?#' ORDER BY 1,2,3
- Select the new data source and select the Namespace that corresponds to your virtual Smartsheet database (like Smartsheet1).
- Drag tables into the pane to insert then.
Note: Since we create a live connection, we can insert whole tables and utilize the filtering and aggregation features native to the MicroStrategy products to customize our datasets.
- Click Finish, choose the option to connect live, save the query, and choose the option to create a new dossier. Live connections are possible and effective, thanks to high-performance data processing native to CData Connect Cloud.
- Choose a visualization, choose fields to display, and apply any filters to create a new visualization of Smartsheet data. Data types are discovered automatically through dynamic metadata discovery. Where possible, the complex queries generated by the filters and aggregations will be pushed down to Smartsheet, while any unsupported operations (which can include SQL functions and JOIN operations) will be managed by the CData SQL engine embedded in Connect Cloud.
- Once you have finished configuring the dossier, click File -> Save.
Using CData Connect Cloud with MicroStrategy, you can easily create robust visualizations and reports on Smartsheet data. For more information on connecting to Smartsheet (and more than 100 other data sources), visit the Connect Cloud page. Sign up for a free trial and start working with live Smartsheet data in MicroStrategy.