How to connect Amazon QuickSight to Adobe Analytics Data

Amazon QuickSight allows users to build interactive dashboards in the cloud. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get cloud-to-cloud access to Adobe Analytics data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Adobe Analytics in Connect AI and build dashboards in Amazon QuickSight with access to Adobe Analytics data.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Adobe Analytics, allowing you to allowing build visualizations from Adobe Analytics data in Amazon QuickSight. By importing your Adobe Analytics data into the Amazon QuickSight "Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine" (SPICE), you can leverage the powerful data processing features of the Amazon ecosystem to build responsive dashboards. And with the ability to schedule refreshes of the data stored in SPICE, you control how up-to-date your dashboards are.

Configure Adobe Analytics Connectivity for Amazon QuickSight

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Adobe Analytics" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Adobe Analytics.

   Adobe Analytics uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties. See the "Getting Started" section of the help documentation for a guide.

   Retrieving GlobalCompanyId

   GlobalCompanyId is a required connection property. If you do not know your Global Company ID, you can find it in the request URL for the users/me endpoint on the Swagger UI. After logging into the Swagger UI Url, expand the users endpoint and then click the GET users/me button. Click the Try it out and Execute buttons. Note your Global Company ID shown in the Request URL immediately preceding the users/me endpoint.

   Retrieving Report Suite Id

   Report Suite ID (RSID) is also a required connection property. In the Adobe Analytics UI, navigate to Admin -> Report Suites and you will get a list of your report suites along with their identifiers next to the name.

   After setting the GlobalCompanyId, RSID and OAuth connection properties, you are ready to connect to Adobe Analytics.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Adobe Analytics 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 Adobe Analytics data from Amazon QuickSight.

Import Adobe Analytics Data into SPICE and Create Interactive Dashboards

The steps below outline creating a new data set based on the connection to Adobe Analytics in Connect AI, importing the dataset into SPICE, and building a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Amazon QuickSight and click "Manage data."
2. Click "Now data set," select SQL Server as the data source, configure the connection to your Connect AI instance, and click "Create data source." 👁 Connecting to Connect AI as a QuickSight data set.
   
3. Select a table to visualize (or subait a custom SQL query for your data). 👁 Selecting a Table to visualize.
   
4. Click "Edit/Preview data" to customize the data set.
5. Select "Import to SPICE for quicker analytics" and click "Visualize." 👁 Importing data to SPICE for quicker analytics.
   
6. Select fields to visualize and a visual type. 👁 Visualizing data in QuickSight via Connect AI (Salesforce is shown).
   

Schedule Refreshes for SPICE Data Sets

QuickSight users can schedule refreshes for data sets that are imported into SPICE, ensuring that data being analyzed is only as old as the most recent refresh.

1. Navigate to the QuickSight home page.
2. Click "Manage data."
3. Select the data set you wish to refresh.
4. Click "Schedule refresh."
5. Click Create, configure the refresh settings (time zone, repeat frequency, and starting datetime), and click Create. 👁 Scheduling a refreshing of the data imported into SPICE.
   

Live Access to Adobe Analytics Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Adobe Analytics data from your Amazon QuickSight dashboard. You can create new visualizations, build interactive dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining live access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like Amazon QuickSight, refer to our Connect AI page.