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Analyze Office 365 Data in Infragistics Reveal
Use the CData API Server to create an OData API on top of Office 365 data and visualize live Office 365 data in Ingragistics Reveal.
Reveal is a data visualization solution provided by Infragistics and can be paired with the CData API Server and Office 365 ADO.NET Provider to build dynamic dashboards from live Office 365 data. The CData API Server generates an OData API for Office 365, which is natively consumable in Reveal. In this article, we walk through connecting to Office 365 in API Server and connecting to the API Server from Infragistics Reveal to create a simple dashboard.
Connect to Office 365 from API Server
CData API Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.
- Open API Server and click Settings -> Connection -> Add Connection
- Select "Office 365"
- Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Office 365.
Office 365 uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate requests, obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and OAuthCallbackURL by registering an app with Office 365. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.
Add Office 365 Resource Definitions in API Server
After connecting to Office 365, create Resources, which represent API endpoints for Office 365 data.
- Click Settings -> Resources -> Add Resource
- Select the Office 365 connection
- Select the table you wish to retrieve and click Next
- (Optional) Edit the resource to select specific fields and more
- Save the settings
Add an API Server User
Create a User to connect to Office 365 from Reveal through API Server.
- Click Settings -> Users
- Click Add
- Configure a User with access to the Office 365 Connection and Resource(s)
(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 Office 365 data in Reveal.
- Log into Reveal and click Dashboards -> New
- Click Data Source -> OData Feed
- Specify the API Server API endpoint URL, for example: https://serverurl/api.rsc
- Select Generic Credentials and specify the API Server username and authentication token
- Select the entity you wish to visualize
- Select fields and choose a chart type
More Information & Free Trial
At this point, you have created a simple dashboard from live Office 365 data. For more information on creating OData feeds from Office 365 (and more than 150 other sources), visit the API Server page. Download a free, 30-day trial and start working live Office 365 data in tools that consume OData APIs.
