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

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

Configure Zuora Connectivity for Klipfolio

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

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Zuora" from the Add Connection panel
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Zuora.

   Zuora uses the OAuth standard to authenticate users. See the online Help documentation for a full OAuth authentication guide.

   Configuring Tenant property

   In order to create a valid connection with the provider you need to choose one of the Tenant values (USProduction by default) which matches your account configuration. The following is a list with the available options:

   • USProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.zuora.com.
   • USAPISandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.apisandbox.zuora.com"
   • USPerformanceTest: Requests sent to https://rest.pt1.zuora.com"
   • EUProduction: Requests sent to https://rest.eu.zuora.com"
   • EUSandbox: Requests sent to https://rest.sandbox.eu.zuora.com"

   Selecting a Zuora Service

   Two Zuora services are available: Data Query and AQuA API. By default ZuoraService is set to AQuADataExport.

   DataQuery

   The Data Query feature enables you to export data from your Zuora tenant by performing asynchronous, read-only SQL queries. We recommend to use this service for quick lightweight SQL queries.

   Limitations
   • The maximum number of input records per table after filters have been applied: 1,000,000
   • The maximum number of output records: 100,000
   • The maximum number of simultaneous queries submitted for execution per tenant: 5
   • The maximum number of queued queries submitted for execution after reaching the limitation of simultaneous queries per tenant: 10
   • The maximum processing time for each query in hours: 1
   • The maximum size of memory allocated to each query in GB: 2
   • The maximum number of indices when using Index Join, in other words, the maximum number of records being returned by the left table based on the unique value used in the WHERE clause when using Index Join: 20,000

   AQuADataExport

   AQuA API export is designed to export all the records for all the objects ( tables ). AQuA query jobs have the following limitations:

   Limitations
   • If a query in an AQuA job is executed longer than 8 hours, this job will be killed automatically.
   • The killed AQuA job can be retried three times before returned as failed.
4. Click Create & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Zuora 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.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your 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, you are ready to connect to Zuora data Klipfolio.

Connect to Zuora from Klipfolio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Klipfolio to create a new Zuora 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., Zuora1)
   • Driver: MS SQL
   • Username: a Connect Cloud user (e.g. user@mydomain.com)
   • Password: the above user's PAT
   • SQL Query: any query to retrieve data (e.g. SELECT * FROM Invoices )
   • Select the checkbox to "Include column headers"
   • Select the checkbox to "Use SSL/TLS"
6. Click "Get data" to preview the Zuora 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 Zuora Data from Cloud Applications

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

To get SQL data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect Cloud.