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Access BambooHR Data as OData Feeds in Tableau
Use the Tableau Desktop business intelligence tool to connect to BambooHR data using the API Server.
The CData API Server, when paired with the ADO.NET Provider for BambooHR (or any of 200+ other ADO.NET Providers), provides BambooHR data as OData Web services. This article will explain how to use the API Server to provide the underlying connectivity to BambooHR data in Tableau's business intelligence tool.
Set Up the API Server
Follow the steps below to begin producing secure BambooHR OData services:
Deploy
The API Server runs on your own server. On Windows, you can deploy using the stand-alone server or IIS. On a Java servlet container, drop in the API Server WAR file. See the help documentation for more information and how-tos.
The API Server is also easy to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, and Heroku.
Connect to BambooHR
After you deploy the API Server and the ADO.NET Provider for BambooHR, provide authentication values and other connection properties needed to connect to BambooHR by clicking Settings -> Connections and adding a new connection in the API Server administration console.
Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the BambooHR Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\bamboohr.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for BambooHR (see below).
BambooHR API Profile Settings
In order to authenticate to BambooHR, you'll need to provide your API Key. To generate an API key, log in and click your name in the upper right-hand corner of any page to get to the user context menu. If you have sufficient permissions, there will be an "API Keys" option in that menu to go to the page, where you can create a new API Key. Additionally, set the Domain, found in the domain name of your BambooHR account. For example if your BambooHR account is acmeinc.bamboohr.com, then the Domain should be 'acmeinc'. Set both the API Key and Domain in the ProfileSettings property to connect.
When you configure the connection, 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.
You can then choose the BambooHR entities you want to allow the API Server to access by clicking Settings -> Resources.
Additionally, click Settings -> Server and set the Default Format to XML (Atom) for compatibility with Tableau.
Authorize API Server Users
After determining the OData services you want to produce, authorize users by clicking Settings -> Users. The API Server uses authtoken-based authentication and supports the major authentication schemes. Access can also be restricted based on IP address; by default only connections to the local machine are allowed. You can authenticate as well as encrypt connections with SSL.
Create Real-Time BambooHR Data Visualizations
Follow the steps below to create data visualizations based on the remote BambooHR data:
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In Tableau, select 'Connect to data'. In the 'On a server' section, click OData.
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In the resulting wizard, enter the URL of the OData endpoint for the API Server. Append the name of the table you want to access to the OData entry URL. For example:
https://your-server/api.rsc/Employees -
Select the
'Use a Username and Password' option and enter the username and password of a user who has access to the API Server.
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Tableau uses the table metadata exposed by the API Server to detect dimension and measure columns.
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To view the BambooHR data, right-click under the table name in the Data section of the dashboard and select the View Data option. The BambooHR data will appear in Tableau.
