VOOZH about

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/salesforce-cloud-google-data-studio.rst

⇱ Create Reports from Salesforce Data in Looker Studio

Create Reports from Salesforce Data in Looker Studio

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live Salesforce data and create custom reports 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 Salesforce data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for Salesforce and generating reports from Salesforce data within Looker Studio.

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

About Salesforce Data Integration

Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:

  • Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
  • Create atomic and batch update operations.
  • Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
  • Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
  • See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.

Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:

  • other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
  • preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
  • databases and data warehouses.

For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.


Getting Started


This article requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Connector for Looker Studio. Get more information on the CData Connect AI and sign up for a free trial at https://www.cdata.com/cloud.


Configure Salesforce Connectivity for Looker Studio

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Salesforce" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Salesforce uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Salesforce. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
  4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

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

Visualize Live Salesforce Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new Salesforce 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.
    2. 👁 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
    5. 👁 Importing from Connections
  5. Now select a Connection (e.g. Salesforce1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
  6. Select a Table (e.g. Account) 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.
    8. 👁 Configuring column definitions
  8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
  9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.
    10. 👁 Visualizing Salesforce data in Looker Studio

Live Access to Salesforce Data from Cloud Applications

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