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Get the Report →Build Dashboards with Smartsheet Data in DBxtra
Create dynamic dashboards and perform analytics based on Smartsheet data in DBxtra.
The CData ODBC driver for Smartsheet enables access to live data from Smartsheet under the ODBC standard, allowing you work with Smartsheet data in a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and directly, using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to connect to Smartsheet data as a generic ODBC Data Provider and create charts, reports, and dashboards based on Smartsheet data in DBxtra.
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
Connect to Smartsheet Data
- If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can configure the DSN using the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.
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.
When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.
- Open the DBxtra application and in the New menu click Project and name the Project.
- Select ODBC Connection as the Data Connection Type.
- Click the browse option () for the Data Source.
- In the Data Link Properties window, select Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers on the Provider tab.
- On the Connection tab, select the Data Source Name and the initial catalog to use (CData).
- Name the Connection and select the appropriate User Groups.
- Double-click the Connection from within the Project to connect to the data.
Create a Dashboard with Smartsheet Data
You are now ready to create a dashboard with Smartsheet data.
- Right-click Report Objects under the Project and select New Report Object.
- In the new Report Object, click the link to create the Query.
- In the Select Data Connection window, select the newly created data connection.
- On the Query tab, expand the connection objects and select the Tables, Views, and specific columns you wish to include in your dashboard. You can specify search requirements and even create complex queries which include JOINs and aggregations.
- On the Dashboard tab, select the visualizations and features for your dashboard. Assign the data values from the query to the appropriate fields for the Dashboards items (Values, Series, etc.)
With a new Dashboard created, you are ready to begin analysis of Smartsheet data. Thanks to the ODBC Driver for Smartsheet, you can refresh the Dashboard and immediately see any changes made at the source. In the same way, you can create and view Reports with live, up-to-date Smartsheet data.