VOOZH about

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/workday-cloud-geckoboard.rst

⇱ Create Dashboards and Visualize Live Workday Data in Geckoboard

Create Dashboards and Visualize Live Workday Data in Geckoboard

👁 Dibyendu Datta
Dibyendu Datta
Lead Technology Evangelist
Use CData Connect AI to connect to live Workday data and create dashboards for real-time monitoring and visualization 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 Workday data from Geckoboard for dashboards, monitoring, visualizations, and more. This article explains how to connect to Workday and create visualizations using Workday data in Geckoboard.

About Workday Data Integration

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

  • Access the tables and datasets you create in Prism Analytics Data Catalog, working with the native Workday data hub without compromising the fidelity of your Workday system.
  • Access Workday Reports-as-a-Service to surface data from departmental datasets not available from Prism and datasets larger than Prism allows.
  • Access base data objects with WQL, REST, or SOAP, getting more granular, detailed access but with the potential need for Workday admins or IT to help craft queries.

Users frequently integrate Workday with analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and Excel, and leverage our tools to replicate Workday data to databases or data warehouses. Access is secured at the user level, based on the authenticated user's identity and role.

For more information on configuring Workday to work with CData, refer to our Knowledge Base articles: Comprehensive Workday Connectivity through Workday WQL and Reports-as-a-Service & Workday + CData: Connection & Integration Best Practices.


Getting Started


CData Connect AI offers a seamless SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Workday, enabling you to effortlessly create dashboards and visualizations using live Workday 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 Workday, utilizing server-side processing for fast and efficient data retrieval of Workday data.

Configure Workday connectivity for Geckoboard

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

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

    To connect to Workday, users need to find the Tenant and BaseURL and then select their API type.

    Obtaining the BaseURL and Tenant

    To obtain the BaseURL and Tenant properties, log into Workday and search for "View API Clients." On this screen, you'll find the Workday REST API Endpoint, a URL that includes both the BaseURL and Tenant.

    The format of the REST API Endpoint is: https://domain.com/subdirectories/mycompany, where:

    • https://domain.com/subdirectories/ is the BaseURL.
    • mycompany (the portion of the url after the very last slash) is the Tenant.
    For example, in the REST API endpoint https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com/ccx/api/v1/mycompany, the BaseURL is https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com and the Tenant is mycompany.

    Using ConnectionType to Select the API

    The value you use for the ConnectionType property determines which Workday API you use. See our Community Article for more information on Workday connectivity options and best practices.

    APIConnectionType Value
    WQLWQL
    Reports as a ServiceReports
    RESTREST
    SOAPSOAP

    Authentication

    Your method of authentication depends on which API you are using.

    • WQL, Reports as a Service, REST: Use OAuth authentication.
    • SOAP: Use Basic or OAuth authentication.

    See the Help documentation for more information on configuring OAuth with Workday.

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

Connect live Workday 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, Workday1)
    • 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 Workday data.

Visualize live Workday data in Geckoboard

To visualize live Workday data in Geckoboard, follow these steps:

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

    2. 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.

    5. Live access to Workday data from cloud applications

    At this stage, you have established a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Workday 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.