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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/dynamicscrm-cloud-quicksight.rst

⇱ How to connect Amazon QuickSight to Dynamics CRM Data

How to connect Amazon QuickSight to Dynamics CRM Data

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create a connection to Dynamics CRM data in CData Connect AI and insert Dynamics CRM data into Amazon QuickSight SPICE to build interactive dashboards.

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

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Dynamics CRM, allowing you to allowing build visualizations from Dynamics CRM data in Amazon QuickSight. By importing your Dynamics CRM 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.

About Dynamics CRM Data Integration

CData simplifies access and integration of live Microsoft Dynamics CRM data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:

  • Read and write data in the Dynamics CRM 2011+ Services and Dynamics CRM Online.
  • Extend the native features of Dynamics CRM with customizable caching and intelligent query aggregation and separation.
  • Authenticate securely with Dynamics CRM in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.

CData customers use our Dynamics CRM connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources) or analyze live Dynamics CRMa data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).


Getting Started


Configure Dynamics CRM Connectivity for Amazon QuickSight

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

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

    The connection string options meet the authentication and connection requirements of different Dynamics CRM instances. To connect to your instance, set the User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, to valid Dynamics CRM user credentials and set the Url to a valid Dynamics CRM server organization root. Additionally, set the CRMVersion property to 'CRM2011+' or 'CRMOnline'. IFD configurations are supported as well; set InternetFacingDeployment to true.

    Additionally, you can provide the security token service (STS) or AD FS endpoint in the STSURL property. This value can be retrieved with the GetSTSUrl stored procedure. Office 365 users can connect to the default STS URL by simply setting CRMVersion.

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

Import Dynamics CRM Data into SPICE and Create Interactive Dashboards

The steps below outline creating a new data set based on the connection to Dynamics CRM 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 Dynamics CRM Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Dynamics CRM 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.