Analyze TaxJar 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 TaxJar data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for TaxJar, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to TaxJar in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.

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

   To authenticate to the TaxJar API, first obtain the API Key from the TaxJar UI.

   NOTE: the API is available only for Professional and Premium TaxJar plans.

   If you already have a Professional or Premium plan you can find the API Key by logging in the TaxJar UI and navigating to Account -> TaxJar API. After obtaining the API Key, you can set it in the APIKey connection property.

   Additional Notes

   • By default, the CData connector will retrieve data of the last 3 months in cases where the entity support date range filtering. You can set StartDate to specify the minimum creation date of the data retrieved.
   • If the API Key has been created for a sandbox API account please set UseSandbox to true, but not all endpoints will work as expected. For more information, refer to the TaxJar developer documentation.
   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown).
   

Add TaxJar Resource Definitions in API Server

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

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

1. Click Settings -> Users
2. Click Add
3. Configure a User with access to the TaxJar Connection and Resource(s) 👁 Creating a new user
   

(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.

Create a Dashboard in Reveal

With the API Server configured, we can visualize TaxJar 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 TaxJar data. For more information on creating OData feeds from TaxJar (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live TaxJar data in tools that consume OData APIs.