Build ZohoPeople-Connected Visualizations in datapine

Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI and datapine to build visualizations and dashboards with access to live ZohoPeople data.

datapine is a browser-based business intelligence platform. When paired with the CData Connect AI, you get access to your ZohoPeople data directly from your datapine visualizations and dashboards. This article describes connecting to ZohoPeople in CData Connect AI and building a simple ZohoPeople-connected visualization in datapine.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for ZohoPeople, allowing you to query data from ZohoPeople without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to ZohoPeople, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested ZohoPeople data quickly.

Configure ZohoPeople Connectivity for datapine

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
  2. Adding a Connection
  3. Select "ZohoPeople" from the Add Connection panel
  4. Selecting a data source
  5. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to ZohoPeople.

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

    ZohoPeople API Profile Settings

    Register an OAuth application in the Zoho Developer Console as a server-based application to obtain your Client ID and Client Secret.

    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  6. Click Save & Test
  7. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add ZohoPeople Connection page and update the User-based permissions. Updating 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. Creating a new PAT
  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 ZohoPeople data from datapine.

Connecting to ZohoPeople from datapine

Once you configure your connection to ZohoPeople in Connect AI, you are ready to connect to ZohoPeople from datapine.

  1. Log into datapine
  2. Click Connect to navigate to the "Connect" page
  3. Select MS SQL Server as the data source
  4. In the Integration step, fill in the connection properties and click "Save and Proceed"
    • Set the Internal Name
    • Set Database Name to the name of the connection we just configured (e.g. API1)
    • Set Host / IP to "tds.cdata.com"
    • Set Username to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected])
    • Set Password to the corresponding PAT
    • Set Database Port to "14333"
    Configuring the connection to CData Connect AI
  5. In the Data Schema step, select the tables and fields to visualize and click "Save and Proceed" Selecting tables and fields to visualize (Salesforce is shown)
  6. In the References step, define any relationships between your selected tables and click "Save and Proceed" Defining foreign key relationships
  7. In the Data Transfer step, click "Go to Analyzer"

Visualize ZohoPeople Data in datapine

After connecting to CData Connect AI, you are ready to visualize your ZohoPeople data in datapine. Simply select the dimensions and measures you wish to visualize!

Visualizing data in datapine (Salesforce is shown)

Having connect to ZohoPeople from datapine, you are now able to visualize and analyze real-time ZohoPeople data no matter where you are. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from datapine, try CData Connect AI today!

Ready to get started?

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