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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/salesforce-odata-infragistics-reveal.rst

⇱ Analyze Salesforce Data in Infragistics Reveal

Analyze Salesforce Data in Infragistics Reveal

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use the CData API Server to create an OData API on top of Salesforce data and visualize live Salesforce data in Infragistics Reveal.

Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server to build dynamic dashboards from live Salesforce data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Salesforce, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Salesforce in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

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


Connect to Salesforce from API Server

CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

  1. Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection 👁 Adding a connection
  2. Select "Salesforce" 👁 Selecting a Connector (Salesforce is shown).
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Salesforce.

    There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Salesforce: OAuth, Login (or basic), and SSO. The Login method requires you to have the username, password, and security token of the user.

    OAuth Authentication (default)

    The default authentication mechanism (and the one preferred by Salesforce) is OAuth. To use OAuth with CData's embedded OAuth application, leave the connection properties blank. If you have configured your own custom OAuth application with Salesforce (see the Help documentation for more information), set OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL to the properties for you application. Set InitiateOAuth to the desired OAuth flow ("GETANDREFRESH" will have the connector manage the entire OAuth flow).

    Login (or Basic) Authentication

    If you do not wish do not wish to use OAuth authentication, you can use Login (or basic) authentication. Set AuthScheme to Basic, and set the User, Password, and SecurityToken properties. You can configure your security token in Salesforce.

    SSO (single sign-on) Authentication

    SSO (single sign-on) can be used by setting the SSOProperties, SSOLoginUrl, and SSOExchangeURL connection properties, which allow you to authenticate to an identity provider. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for more information.

    Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

    If your Salesforce org has MFA enforcement enabled, set MFACode to the time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) generated by your authenticator app (such as Salesforce Authenticator or Google Authenticator). MFACode applies to both OAuth and Login authentication flows.

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).

Add Salesforce Resource Definitions in API Server

After connecting to Salesforce, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Salesforce data.

  1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource 👁 Adding a new resource
  2. Select the Salesforce connection 👁 Selecting a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  3. Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next 👁 Selecting a Table (Salesforce is shown)
  4. (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
  5. Save the settings

Add an API Server User

Create a User to connect to Salesforce from Reveal through API Server.

  1. Click Settings -> Users
  2. Click Add
  3. Configure a User with access to the Salesforce Connection and Resource(s) 👁 Creating a new user
👁 API Server users

(Optional) Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

When accessing and connecting to multiple different domains from an application such as Ajax, there is a possibility of violating the limitations of cross-site scripting. In that case, configure the CORS settings in Settings -> Server.

  • Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS): ON
  • Allow all domains without '*': ON
  • Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, PUT, POST, OPTIONS
  • Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization

Save the changes to the settings.

👁 Configuring CORS settings

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize Salesforce data in Reveal.

  1. Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New 👁 Adding a new dashboard
  2. Click Data Source -> OData Feed 👁 Adding a new OData data source
  3. Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc 👁 Configuring the OData URL
  4. Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token 👁 Configuring the credentials
  5. Select the entity you wish to visualize 👁 Selecting an entity to visualize (Salesforce is shown.)
  6. Select fields and choose a chart type 👁 Visualizing data in Reveal (Salesforce is shown.)

More Information & Free Trial

At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Salesforce data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Salesforce (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Salesforce data in tools that consume OData APIs.