Integrate BambooHR Data in the Pentaho Report Designer

The CData JDBC Driver for BambooHR data enables access to live data from dashboards and reports. This article shows how to connect to BambooHR data as a JDBC data source and publish reports based on BambooHR data in Pentaho.

Connect and Create a Report

1. Copy the JAR file of the driver, located in the lib subfolder of the installation directory, to the \Report-Designer\lib\jdbc\ folder in the Pentaho directory.
2. Run the report-designer.bat file in the \Report-Designer\ folder to open the Report-Designer UI.

3. Create a new data source with the driver by clicking Data -> Add Data Source -> Advanced -> JDBC (Custom) and then creating a new BambooHR connection. In the resulting dialog, configure the connection properties as shown below.

   • Custom Connection URL property: Enter the JDBC URL. This starts with jdbc:api: and is followed by a semicolon-separated list of connection properties.

     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, you will need to 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.

     Built-in Connection String Designer

     For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the BambooHR JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

     java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar

     Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

     When you configure the JDBC URL, 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.

     Below is a typical JDBC URL:

     jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\BambooHR.apip;ProfileSettings='Domain=acmeinc;APIKey=your_api_key';
   • Custom Driver Class Name: Enter cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver.
   • User Name: The username to authenticate with.
   • Password: The password to authenticate with.

Add BambooHR Data to a Report

You are now ready to create a report with BambooHR data.

1. Add the BambooHR source to your report: Click Data -> Add Data Source -> JDBC and select the data source.

2. Configure the query. This article uses the one below:

   SELECT Id, DisplayName FROM Employees WHERE Department = 'Sales'
3. Drag a chart onto your report and double-click it to edit the chart. Run the report to display the chart. You can use the results of this query to create a simple chart for the Employees table.
4. Finally, run the report to see the chart.