Explore Geographical Relationships in Avalara AvaTax Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Avalara AvaTax is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Avalara AvaTax data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Avalara AvaTax data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Avalara AvaTax

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

The primary method for performing basic authentication is to provide your login credentials, as follows:

• User: Set this to your username.
• Password: Set this to your password.

Optionally, if you are making use of a sandbox environment, set the following:

• UseSandbox: Set this to true if you are authenticating with a sandbox account.

Authenticating Using Account Number and License Key

Alternatively, you can authenticate using your account number and license key. Connect to data using the following:

• AccountId: Set this to your Account Id. The Account Id is listed in the upper right hand corner of the admin console.
• LicenseKey: Set this to your Avalara Avatax license key. You can generate a license key by logging into Avalara Avatax as an account administrator and navigating to Settings -> Reset License Key.

When you configure the DSN, 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.

When you configure the DSN, 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.

Import Avalara AvaTax Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Avalara AvaTax data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Avalara AvaTax Data

After importing the Avalara AvaTax data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Avalara AvaTax entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.