Analyze UKG Pro WFM Data in R via ODBC

Access UKG Pro WFM data with pure R script and standard SQL. You can use the CData ODBC Driver for UKG Pro WFM and the RODBC package to work with remote UKG Pro WFM data in R. By using the CData Driver, you are leveraging a driver written for industry-proven standards to access your data in the popular, open-source R language. This article shows how to use the driver to execute SQL queries to UKG Pro WFM data and visualize UKG Pro WFM data in R.

Install R

You can complement the driver's performance gains from multi-threading and managed code by running the multithreaded Microsoft R Open or by running R linked with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. This article uses Microsoft R Open (MRO).

Connect to UKG Pro WFM as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to UKG Pro WFM follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments.

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

UKGProWFM API Profile Settings

UKG Pro Workforce Management uses OAuth 2.0 with the Resource Owner Password Credentials grant (grant_type=password) to authorize access to the API. Unlike most OAuth-based profiles, this does not use a browser redirect/authorization-code step: the driver exchanges your UKG Pro WFM username, password, client ID, and client secret directly for an access token.

Set the following connection properties to authenticate:

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuthPassword.
• Host: Set this to the hostname of your UKG Pro Workforce Management datacenter/tenant (for example, yourcompany.mykronos.com). Do not include the protocol (https://) or a trailing slash.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to the client ID issued for your UKG Pro Workforce Management OAuth application.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret issued for your UKG Pro Workforce Management OAuth application.
• User: Set this to your UKG Pro Workforce Management username.
• Password: Set this to your UKG Pro Workforce Management password.

Access tokens are obtained from https://{Host}/api/authentication/access_token. Refresh tokens issued by UKG Pro Workforce Management expire after 7 days; if a refresh attempt fails because the refresh token itself has expired, the driver must re-authenticate with your User/Password credentials to obtain a new access token.

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.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for UKG Pro WFM in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData API Source]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for UKG Pro WFM
Description = My Description
Profile = C:\profiles\UKGProWFM.apip
AuthScheme = OAuthPassword
ProfileSettings = 'Host = yourcompany.mykronos.com
User = your_username
Password = your_password
'
OAuthClientId = your_client_id
OAuthClientSecret = your_client_secret

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Load the RODBC Package

To use the driver, download the RODBC package. In RStudio, click Tools -> Install Packages and enter RODBC in the Packages box.

After installing the RODBC package, the following line loads the package:

library(RODBC)

Note: This article uses RODBC version 1.3-12. Using Microsoft R Open, you can test with the same version, using the checkpoint capabilities of Microsoft's MRAN repository. The checkpoint command enables you to install packages from a snapshot of the CRAN repository, hosted on the MRAN repository. The snapshot taken Jan. 1, 2016 contains version 1.3-12.

library(checkpoint)
checkpoint("2016-01-01")

Connect to UKG Pro WFM Data as an ODBC Data Source

You can connect to a DSN in R with the following line:

conn <- odbcConnect("CData API Source")

Schema Discovery

The driver models UKG Pro WFM APIs as relational tables, views, and stored procedures. Use the following line to retrieve the list of tables:

sqlTables(conn)

Execute SQL Queries

Use the sqlQuery function to execute any SQL query supported by the UKG Pro WFM API.

employees <- sqlQuery(conn, "SELECT PersonNumber, UserName FROM Employees WHERE PersonId = '12345'", believeNRows=FALSE, rows_at_time=1)

You can view the results in a data viewer window with the following command:

View(employees)

Plot UKG Pro WFM Data

You can now analyze UKG Pro WFM data with any of the data visualization packages available in the CRAN repository. You can create simple bar plots with the built-in bar plot function:

par(las=2,ps=10,mar=c(5,15,4,2))
barplot(employees$UserName, main="UKG Pro WFM Employees", names.arg = employees$PersonNumber, horiz=TRUE)