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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/smartsheet-odbc-dundas-bi.rst

⇱ Build Dashboards with Smartsheet Data in Dundas BI

Build Dashboards with Smartsheet Data in Dundas BI

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create dynamic dashboards and perform analytics based on Smartsheet data in Dundas BI.

The CData ODBC Driver for Smartsheet enables access to live data from Smartsheet under the ODBC standard, allowing you work with Smartsheet data in a wide variety of BI, reporting, and ETL tools and directly, using familiar SQL queries. This article shows how to connect to Smartsheet data as a generic ODBC Data Provider and create charts, reports, and dashboards based on Smartsheet data in Dundas BI.

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


Connect to Smartsheet Data

  1. If you have not already done so, provide values for the required connection properties in the data source name (DSN). You can configure the DSN using the built-in Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator. This is also the last step of the driver installation. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for a guide to using the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure a DSN.

    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.

    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.

  2. Open the Dundas BI interface, open the menu, and click New Data Connector. 👁 Adding a New Data Connector.
  3. Configure the Dundas BI Data Connector:
    • Name the Data Connector.
    • Select "ODBC generic" as the Data Provider.
    • Check the "Use System DSN" checkbox.
    • Select the appropriate System DSN.
    👁 Configure the Data Connector.

Add Smartsheet Data to a Dashboard

You are now ready to create a dashboard with Smartsheet data.

  1. Navigate to the Home page.
  2. Click Explore Data.
    3. 👁 Home > Explore Data
  3. Expand the appropriate Data Connector.
  4. Drag the relevant data from the Connector to the panel.
    • You can select an entire "table" to add, but you may need to remove Measures/Rows from the Metric Set to build an appropriate visualization. Alternatively, you can select only the fields you wish to include in the visualization.
    • With the fields selected, you can add any filters or conditions on the Measures and Rows, further customizing the visualization.
    5. 👁 Adding data from a Data Connector. (Salesforce is shown.)
  5. Click Re-visualize from the menu bar and select the appropriate visualization for the data.
    6. 👁 Displayed Data. (Salesforce is shown.)
  6. Click Add To New Dashboard to add the visualization to a new dashboard.
    7. 👁 Adding the Visualization to a Dashboard. (Salesforce is shown.)
  7. Configure the dashboard, creating dynamic visualizations of Smartsheet data. 👁 Sample Dashboard (Salesforce data is shown.)

Ready to get started?

Download a free trial of the Smartsheet ODBC Driver to get started:

 Download Now

Learn more:

👁 Smartsheet Icon
Smartsheet ODBC Driver

The Smartsheet ODBC Driver is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live data from Smartsheet, directly from any applications that support ODBC connectivity.

Access Smartsheet Sheets, Contacts, Folders, Groups, Users, etc. through a standard ODBC Driver interface.