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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/freshdesk-cloud-looker.rst

⇱ Analyze Freshdesk Data in Looker

Analyze Freshdesk Data in Looker

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Freshdesk Data from Looker and build custom apps using live Freshdesk data.

Looker is a business intelligence and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze and share real-time business analytics. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Freshdesk data for business applications. This article shows how to connect to Freshdesk in Connect AI and then connect to Freshdesk data in Looker.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Freshdesk, allowing you to build reports from live Freshdesk data in Looker — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you create applications to work with data, Looker generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Freshdesk, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Freshdesk data.

Configure Freshdesk Connectivity for Looker

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

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

    FreshDesk makes use of basic authentication. To connect to data, set the following connection properties:

    • Domain: Set this to the domain associated with your FreshDesk account. For example, in your URL: https://my_domain.freshdesk.com.
    • APIKey: Set this to the API key associated with your FreshDesk account. To retrieve your API key, Log into your support Portal -> Click on profile picture in the top right corner -> profile settings page. The API key will be available below the change password section to the right.
    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Freshdesk 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 Freshdesk data from Looker.

Connect to Freshdesk in Looker

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker to create a new Freshdesk data source.

  1. Log-in to Looker
  2. In the navigation pane, select Admin. 👁 Selecting Admin
  3. Under the Database category, select Connections. 👁 Selecting connections
  4. On the Connections page, click Add Connection. 👁 Adding a new connection
  5. Enter the connection settings:
    • Name: the name for the connection in models.
    • Dialect: select Microsoft SQL Server 2017+.
    • SSH Server: leave this disabled.
    • Remote Host:Port: enter tds.cdata.com in the first field and 14333 in the second field.
    • Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, QuickBooksOnline1).
    • Username: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected]
    • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page
    Leave the rest of the connection settings at their default values unless you need to modify them. 👁 Configuring connection settings
  6. At the bottom of the page, click Test These Settings to ensure that you can connect to CData Connect AI.
  7. Click Add Connection to create the connection and return to the Connections page. 👁 New connection added.

Your connection is now available for use in Looker. To connect to additional data sources from your CData Connect AI account, repeat the setup steps above, changing the value for Database for each data source.

Creating A Looker Visualization From The SQL Runner and Explore Features

To create a visualization in Looker using the SQL Runner, follow these steps:

  1. In the Looker interface, select Develop -> SQL Runner from the left navigation pane. 👁 Select SQL Runner.
  2. On the SQL Runner interface, select the connection you made in the previous steps. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.
  3. Now, click the gear symbol next to a table and then select Explore Table. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.
  4. Next, on the left menu, select fields from the table and click Run. You can now expand the Visualization accordion, and see a bar chart, by default. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.

    We have now created a visualization of Freshdesk data in Looker using CData Connect AI!

Get CData Connect AI

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today!