Create Reports from Kintone 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 Kintone data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for Kintone and generating reports from Kintone data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for Kintone, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live Kintone 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 Kintone. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested Kintone data.

Configure Kintone Connectivity for Looker Studio

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

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

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

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

   In addition to the authentication values, set the following parameters to connect to and retrieve data from Kintone:

   • Url: The URL of your account.
   • GuestSpaceId: Optional. Set this when using a guest space.

   Authenticating with Kintone

   Kintone supports the following authentication methods.

   Using Password Authentication

   You must set the following to authenticate:

   • User: The username of your account.
   • Password: The password of your account.

   Using Basic Authentication

   If the basic authentication security feature is set on the domain, supply the additional login credentials with BasicAuthUser and BasicAuthPassword. Basic authentication requires these credentials in addition to User and Password.

   Using Client SSL

   Instead of basic authentication, you can specify a client certificate to authenticate. Set SSLClientCert, SSLClientCertType, SSLClientCertSubject, and SSLClientCertPassword. Additionally, set User and Password to your login credentials.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Kintone Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

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

Visualize Live Kintone Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new Kintone 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. Kintone1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
   
6. Select a Table (e.g. Comments) 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 Kintone data in Looker Studio

Live Access to Kintone Data from Cloud Applications

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