Build Avalara AvaTax-Connected Dashboards in Redash

Redash lets you connect and query your data sources, build dashboards to visualize data and share them with your company. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Avalara AvaTax data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Avalara AvaTax and build visualizations from Avalara AvaTax data in Redash.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Avalara AvaTax, allowing you to easily build reports from live Avalara AvaTax data in Redash — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Redash generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Server pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Avalara AvaTax, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Avalara AvaTax data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Avalara AvaTax Data

CData Connect Server uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources and generate APIs.

1. Login to Connect Server and click Connections.
2. Select "Avalara AvaTax" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Avalara AvaTax.

   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.
4. Click Save Changes
5. Click Privileges -> Add and add the new user (or an existing user) with the appropriate permissions.

With the virtual database created, you are ready to connect to Avalara AvaTax data from Redash.

Visualize Avalara AvaTax Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual Avalara AvaTax database in Connect Server and building a simple visualization from the data.

Create a New Data Source

1. Log into Redash, click on your profile and click "Data Sources"
2. Click the " New Data Source" button
3. Select "Microsoft SQL Server" as the Data Source Type
4. On the configuration tab, set the following properties:
   • Name: Name the data source (e.g. Avalara AvaTax (CData Connect))
   • Host: The full URL to your CData Connect instance (e.g. https://connect_server_url)
   • Port: The port of the CData Connect SQL Server endpoint (e.g. 1433)
   • User: A CData Connect user
   • Password: The password for the above user
   • Database name: The name of the virtual database for Avalara AvaTax (e.g. AvalaraAvatax1)
   • Click the checkbox to Use SSQL
5. Click Create
6. Click the "Test Connection" button to ensure you have configured the connection properly

With the new Data Source created, we are ready to visualize our Avalara AvaTax data.

Create a Avalara AvaTax Data Visualization

1. Click Create -> New Query
2. Select the newly created Data Source (you can explore the data structure in the New Query wizard)
3. Write a SQL statement to retrieve the data, for example:
   SELECT Id, TotalTax FROM Transactions WHERE Code = '051349'
4. Click the "Execute" button to load Avalara AvaTax data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from Avalara AvaTax data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to Avalara AvaTax Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Avalara AvaTax data from Redash. You can create new visualizations, build dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining SQL access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from cloud applications like Redash, refer to our Connect Server page.