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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/smartsheet-cloud-datapine.rst

⇱ Build Smartsheet-Connected Visualizations in datapine

Build Smartsheet-Connected Visualizations in datapine

👁 Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI and datapine to build visualizations and dashboards with access to live Smartsheet data.

datapine is a browser-based business intelligence platform. When paired with the CData Connect AI, you get access to your Smartsheet data directly from your datapine visualizations and dashboards. This article describes connecting to Smartsheet in CData Connect AI and building a simple Smartsheet-connected visualization in datapine.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL Server interface for Smartsheet, allowing you to query data from Smartsheet 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 Smartsheet, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Smartsheet data quickly.

About Smartsheet Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Smartsheet. Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Read and write attachments, columns, comments and discussions.
  • View the data in individuals cells, report on cell history, and more.
  • Perform Smartsheet-specific actions like deleting or downloading attachments, creating, copying, deleting, or moving sheets, and moving or copying rows to another sheet.

Users frequently integrate Smartsheet with analytics tools such as Tableau, Crystal Reports, and Excel. Others leverage our tools to replicate Smartsheet data to databases or data warehouses.


Getting Started


Configure Smartsheet Connectivity for datapine

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Smartsheet" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Smartsheet.

    Smartsheet uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, register an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

    However, for testing purposes you can instead use the Personal Access Token you get when you create an application; set this to the OAuthAccessToken connection property.

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

Connecting to Smartsheet from datapine

Once you configure your connection to Smartsheet in Connect AI, you are ready to connect to Smartsheet from datapine.

  1. Log into datapine
  2. Click Connect to navigate to the "Connect" page
  3. Select MS SQL Server as the data source
  4. In the Integration step, fill in the connection properties and click "Save and Proceed"
    • Set the Internal Name
    • Set Database Name to the name of the connection we just configured (e.g. Smartsheet1)
    • Set Host / IP to "tds.cdata.com"
    • Set Username to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected])
    • Set Password to the corresponding PAT
    • Set Database Port to "14333"
    👁 Configuring the connection to CData Connect AI
  5. In the Data Schema step, select the tables and fields to visualize and click "Save and Proceed" 👁 Selecting tables and fields to visualize (Salesforce is shown)
  6. In the References step, define any relationships between your selected tables and click "Save and Proceed" 👁 Defining foreign key relationships
  7. In the Data Transfer step, click "Go to Analyzer"

Visualize Smartsheet Data in datapine

After connecting to CData Connect AI, you are ready to visualize your Smartsheet data in datapine. Simply select the dimensions and measures you wish to visualize!

👁 Visualizing data in datapine (Salesforce is shown)

Having connect to Smartsheet from datapine, you are now able to visualize and analyze real-time Smartsheet data no matter where you are. To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from datapine, try CData Connect AI today!