Create Reports from BigCommerce Data in Looker Studio

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to BigCommerce data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for BigCommerce and generating reports from BigCommerce data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for BigCommerce, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live BigCommerce data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to BigCommerce. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested BigCommerce data.

Configure BigCommerce Connectivity for Looker Studio

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

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

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

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to BigCommerce.

   BigCommerce authentication is based on the standard OAuth flow. To authenticate, you must initially create an app via the Big Commerce developer platform where you can obtain an OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL. These three parameters will be set as connection properties to your driver.

   Additionally, in order to connect to your BigCommerce Store, you will need your StoreId. To find your Store Id please follow these steps:

   1. Log in to your BigCommerce account.
   2. From the Home Page, select Advanced Settings > API Accounts.
   3. Click Create API Account.
   4. A text box named API Path will appear on your screen.
   5. Inside you can see a URL of the following structure: https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/{Store Id}/v3.
   6. As demonstrated above, your Store Id will be between the 'stores/' and '/v3' path paramters.
   7. Once you have retrieved your Store Id you can either click Cancel or proceed in creating an API Account in case you do not have one already.
   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add BigCommerce Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to BigCommerce data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live BigCommerce Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new BigCommerce data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.
👁 Create a new connection in Looker Studio

2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account. 👁 Granting permissions to the Connector
   
3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authenticating with CData Connect AI
   
4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next
👁 Importing from Connections

5. Now select a Connection (e.g. BigCommerce1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
   
6. Select a Table (e.g. Customers) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue 👁 Selecting a Table
   
7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
👁 Configuring column definitions

8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.
👁 Visualizing BigCommerce data in Looker Studio

Live Access to BigCommerce Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live BigCommerce data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating BigCommerce data.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.