Build Confluence-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 Confluence data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Confluence and build visualizations from Confluence data in Redash.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Confluence, allowing you to easily build reports from live Confluence 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 Confluence, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Confluence data.

Create a Virtual SQL Server Database for Confluence 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 "Confluence" from Available Data Sources.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Confluence.

   Obtaining an API Token

   An API token is necessary for account authentication. To generate one, login to your Atlassian account and navigate to API tokens > Create API token. The generated token will be displayed.

   Connect Using a Confluence Cloud Account

   To connect to a Cloud account, provide the following (Note: Password has been deprecated for connecting to a Cloud Account and is now used only to connect to a Server Instance.):

   • User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the Confluence server.
   • APIToken: The API Token associated with the currently authenticated user.
   • Url: The URL associated with your JIRA endpoint. For example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.

   Connect Using a Confluence Server Instance

   To connect to a Server instance, provide the following:

   • User: The user which will be used to authenticate with the Confluence instance.
   • Password: The password which will be used to authenticate with the Confluence server.
   • Url: The URL associated with your JIRA endpoint. For example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.
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 Confluence data from Redash.

Visualize Confluence Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual Confluence 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. Confluence (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 Confluence (e.g. Confluence1)
   • 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 Confluence data.

Create a Confluence 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 Key, Name FROM Pages WHERE Id = '10000'
4. Click the "Execute" button to load Confluence data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from Confluence data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to Confluence Data from Cloud Applications

At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to Confluence 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.