Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live Azure DevOps data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Azure DevOps, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Azure DevOps in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.
Connect to Azure DevOps from API Server
CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.
- Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection
π Adding a connection
- Select "Azure DevOps"
π Selecting a Connector (Salesforce is shown).
- Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Azure DevOps.
You can connect to your Azure DevOps account by providing the Organization and PersonalAccessToken.
Obtaining a Personal Access Token
A PersonalAccessToken is necessary for account authentication.
To generate one, log in to your Azure DevOps Organization account and navigate to Profile -> Personal Access Tokens -> New Token. The generated token will be displayed.
If you wish to authenticate to Azure DevOps using OAuth refer to the online Help documentation for an authentication guide.
π Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).
Add Azure DevOps Resource Definitions in API Server
After connecting to Azure DevOps, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Azure DevOps data.
- Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
π Adding a new resource
- Select the Azure DevOps connection
π Selecting a connection (Salesforce is shown)
- Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next
π Selecting a Table (Salesforce is shown)
- (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
- Save the settings
Add an API Server User
Create a User to connect to Azure DevOps from Reveal through API Server.
- Click Settings -> Users
- Click Add
- Configure a User with access to the Azure DevOps Connection and Resource(s)
π Creating a new user
π API Server users
(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)
When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.
- Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
- Allow all domains without '*': ON
- Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
- Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization
Save the changes to the settings.
π Configuring CORS settings
Create a Dashboard in Reveal
With the API Server configured, we can visualize Azure DevOps data in Reveal.
- Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
π Adding a new dashboard
- Click Data Source -> OData Feed
π Adding a new OData data source
- Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc
π Configuring the OData URL
- Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token
π Configuring the credentials
- Select the entity you wish to visualize
π Selecting an entity to visualize (Salesforce is shown.)
- Select fields and choose a chart type
π Visualizing data in Reveal (Salesforce is shown.)
More Information & Free Trial
At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Azure DevOps data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Azure DevOps (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Azure DevOps data in tools that consume OData APIs.