Query, Visualize, and Share live Salesforce Marketing Data in Redash

Redash is a collaboration tool that lets you query, visualize, and share your data. When paired with CData Connect AI, Redash gets access to live Salesforce Marketing data. This article demonstrates how to connect to Salesforce Marketing using Connect AI and work with live Salesforce Marketing data in Redash.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Salesforce Marketing, allowing you to query data from Salesforce Marketing without replicating the data to a natively supported database. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Salesforce Marketing, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Salesforce Marketing data quickly.

Configure Salesforce Marketing Connectivity for Redash

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

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

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

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Salesforce Marketing.

   Authenticating to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

   Set the and to your login credentials, or to the credentials for a sandbox user if you are connecting to a sandbox account.

   Connecting to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud APIs

   By default, the data provider connects to production environments. Set to true to use a Salesforce Marketing Cloud sandbox account.

   The default Instance is s7 of the Web Services API; however, if you use a different instance, you can set .

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce Marketing 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 Salesforce Marketing data from Redash.

Connect to Salesforce Marketing from Redash using Connect AI

To establish a connection from Redash to CData Connect AI using the Virtual SQL Server, follow these steps:

1. Log into Redash.
2. Click the settings widget on the top right.
3. Click New Data Source.
4. Select Microsoft SQL Server as the Data Source Type.
5. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
   • Database Name: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, Salesforce1).
   • Server: enter the virtual SQL Server host name (tds.cdata.com)
   • User: 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.
   • Port: enter 14333
   👁 Configuring the connection to Connect AI from Redash.
   
6. Click Create.
7. Click Test Connection to ensure that the connection is configured properly.

You can now work with live Salesforce Marketing data in Redash.

Get CData Connect AI

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