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

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

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

   To successfully connect to your ERP instance, you must specify the following connection properties:

   • Url:the URL of the server hosting your ERP instance. For example, https://myserver.EpicorSaaS.com
   • ERPInstance: the name of your ERP instance.
   • User: the username of your account.
   • Password: the password of your account.
   • Service: the service you want to retrieve data from. For example, BaqSvc.

   In addition, you may also set the optional connection properties:

   • ApiKey: An optional key that may be required for connection to some services depending on your account configuration.
   • ApiVersion: Defaults to v1. May be set to v2 to use the newer Epicor API.
   • Company: Required if you set the ApiVersion to v2.
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 Epicor Kinetic data from Redash.

Visualize Epicor Kinetic Data in Redash

The steps below outline creating a new data source in Redash based on the virtual Epicor Kinetic 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. Epicor Kinetic (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 Epicor Kinetic (e.g. epicorKinetic1)
   • 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 Epicor Kinetic data.

Create a Epicor Kinetic 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 CustNum, Company FROM Customers WHERE CompanyName = 'CompanyName'
4. Click the "Execute" button to load Epicor Kinetic data into Redash via CData Connect
5. Use the Visualization Editor to create and analyze graphs from Epicor Kinetic data
6. You can schedule the query to refresh and update the visualization periodically

SQL Access to Epicor Kinetic Data from Cloud Applications

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