Create Dashboards and Visualize Live Sugar CRM Data in Geckoboard

Geckoboard is a business intelligence tool that simplifies the visualization of key performance indicators (KPIs) by creating live dashboards. It allows teams to consolidate data from various sources - such as Salesforce, Snowflake, Google Analytics, and spreadsheets - and display it in a visually engaging and easy-to-understand format. Designed for simplicity and clarity, Geckoboard helps businesses monitor performance, track goals, and make data-driven decisions.

When used with CData Connect AI, you gain instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Sugar CRM data from Geckoboard for dashboards, monitoring, visualizations, and more. This article explains how to connect to Sugar CRM and create visualizations using Sugar CRM data in Geckoboard.

CData Connect AI offers a seamless SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Sugar CRM, enabling you to effortlessly create dashboards and visualizations using live Sugar CRM data in Geckoboard. While building visualizations, Geckoboard requires SQL queries to retrieve the necessary data. With built-in optimized data processing, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (such as filters and JOINs) directly to Sugar CRM, utilizing server-side processing for fast and efficient data retrieval of Sugar CRM data.

Configure Sugar CRM connectivity for Geckoboard

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

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

2. Select "Sugar CRM" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Sugar CRM.

   The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SugarCRM user credentials. This will use the default OAuth token created to allow client logins. OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret are required if you do not wish to use the default OAuth token.

   You can generate a new OAuth consumer key and consumer secret in Admin -> OAuth Keys. Set the OAuthClientId to the OAuth consumer key. Set the OAuthClientSecret to the consumer secret.

   Additionally, specify the URL to the SugarCRM account.

   Note that retrieving SugarCRM metadata can be expensive. It is advised that you store the metadata locally as described in the "Caching Metadata" chapter of the help documentation.

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

Connect live Sugar CRM data in Geckoboard

Follow these steps to establish a connection from Geckoboard to the CData Connect AI Virtual SQL Server API.

1. Log into Geckoboard
2. Add a custom dashboard name and click Add widget 👁 Click on Add widget.
   
3. Search for "Databases" in the Connect your data search bar 👁 Search and click on Databases.
   
4. Select SQL Server as the Database type 👁 Select SQL Server.
   
5. Fill in the connection details:
   • Connection name: enter a name for the connection to CData Connect AI
   • Host: enter the Virtual SQL Server endpoint: tds.cdata.com
   • Port: : enter 14333
   • Database name: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, SugarCRM1)
   • Username: 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
   👁 Configuring the connection to the Virtual SQL Server API
   
6. Click Connect

After successfully configuring your connection, you can query and visualize your Sugar CRM data.

Visualize live Sugar CRM data in Geckoboard

To visualize live Sugar CRM data in Geckoboard, follow these steps:

1. Write an SQL query to select the specific Sugar CRM data needed for visualization in Paste your SQL query compiler screen 👁 Write an SQL query to select specific Sugar CRM data.
   

Depending on your use case, you can also generate the desired SQL query using the Data Copilot or Query Builder features of CData Connect AI

👁 Generate an SQL query using AI Generator in Connect AI.

2. Choose the visualization type (Line Chart, Bar Chart, or Column Chart) that best suits your business requirements 👁 Choose the visualization type.
   
3. The selected chart will be displayed on Geckoboard 👁 Chart is displayed.
   
4. Click the menu (three dots in the top-right corner of the graph) and select Edit to modify the SQL query or set a refresh interval for the chart 👁 Edit the widget.
   

Live access to Sugar CRM data from cloud applications

At this stage, you have established a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Sugar CRM data in Geckoboard. This enables you to create dashboards to monitor and visualize your data seamlessly.

For more details on accessing live data from over 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources through cloud applications like Geckoboard, visit our Connect AI page.