Explore Geographical Relationships in Salesforce Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Salesforce is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Salesforce data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Salesforce data in Power Map.

Getting Started

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Create an ODBC Data Source for Salesforce

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

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.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Import Salesforce Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Salesforce data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Salesforce Data

After importing the Salesforce data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Salesforce entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.