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

⇱ Analyze SharePoint Data in Infragistics Reveal

Analyze SharePoint Data in Infragistics Reveal

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use the CData API Server to create an OData API on top of SharePoint data and visualize live SharePoint 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 SharePoint data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for SharePoint, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to SharePoint in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

About SharePoint Data Integration

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

  • Access data from a wide range of SharePoint versions, including Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and above, and SharePoint Online.
  • Access all of SharePoint thanks to support for Hidden and Lookup columns.
  • Recursively scan folders to create a relational model of all SharePoint data.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to upload and download documents and attachments.

Most customers rely on CData solutions to integrate SharePoint data into their database or data warehouse, while others integrate their SharePoint data with preferred data tools, like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel.

For more information on how customers are solving problems with CData's SharePoint solutions, refer to our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.


Getting Started


Connect to SharePoint 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 "SharePoint" 👁 Selecting a Connector (Salesforce is shown).
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SharePoint.

    Set the URL property to the base SharePoint site or to a sub-site. This allows you to query any lists and other SharePoint entities defined for the site or sub-site.

    The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SharePoint user credentials when using SharePoint On-Premise.

    If you are connecting to SharePoint Online, set the SharePointEdition to SHAREPOINTONLINE along with the User and Password connection string properties. For more details on connecting to SharePoint Online, see the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).

Add SharePoint Resource Definitions in API Server

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

  1. Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource 👁 Adding a new resource
  2. Select the SharePoint 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 SharePoint from Reveal through API Server.

  1. Click Settings -> Users
  2. Click Add
  3. Configure a User with access to the SharePoint 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 SharePoint 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 SharePoint data. For more information on creating OData feeds from SharePoint (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live SharePoint data in tools that consume OData APIs.