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⇱ Create Reports from Smartsheet Data in Looker Studio

Create Reports from Smartsheet Data in Looker Studio

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to gain access to live Smartsheet data and create custom reports in Looker Studio.

Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, empowers users to craft customized reports featuring data visualizations that can be shared with clients while reflecting your brand identity. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate cloud-to-cloud access to Smartsheet data to create visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article provides step-by-step instructions on establishing a virtual database for Smartsheet and generating reports from Smartsheet data within Looker Studio.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless cloud-to-cloud interface tailored for Smartsheet, making it straightforward to construct reports directly from live Smartsheet data within Looker Studio without the need for data replication. As you create visualizations, Looker Studio generates queries to retrieve data. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported query operations, including filters, JOINs, and more, directly to Smartsheet. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly provide the requested Smartsheet data.

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


This article requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Connector for Looker Studio. Get more information on the CData Connect AI and sign up for a free trial at https://www.cdata.com/cloud.


Configure Smartsheet Connectivity for Looker Studio

Connectivity to Smartsheet from Looker Studio is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Smartsheet data from Looker Studio, 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

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Smartsheet data from Looker Studio.

Visualize Live Smartsheet Data from Looker Studio

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker Studio to create a new Smartsheet data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

  1. Log into Looker Studio, click data sources, create a new data source, and choose CData Connect AI Connector.
    2. 👁 Create a new connection in Looker Studio
  2. Click Authorize and allow access to your Google account. 👁 Granting permissions to the Connector
  3. Click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authenticating with CData Connect AI
  4. In the CData Connect AI Connector in Looker Studio select Connections to import from the dropdown and click Next
    5. 👁 Importing from Connections
  5. Now select a Connection (e.g. Smartsheet1) and click Next 👁 Selecting a Connection
  6. Select a Table (e.g. Sheet_Event_Plan_Budget) or use a Custom Query and click Connect to continue 👁 Selecting a Table
  7. If needed, modify columns, click Create Report, and add the data source to the report.
    8. 👁 Configuring column definitions
  8. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
  9. Select Dimensions and Measures to customize your visualization.
    10. 👁 Visualizing Smartsheet data in Looker Studio

Live Access to Smartsheet Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Smartsheet data from your Looker Studio workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Smartsheet data.

Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.