Prepare, Blend, and Analyze Facebook Data in Alteryx Designer

Alteryx is a software platform that allows people to work with data more easily. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, Alteryx provides instant access to Facebook data from your data automation processes. This article demonstrates how to connect to Facebook using Connect Cloud and work with Facebook data in Alteryx.

CData Connect Cloud offers a dedicated SQL Server interface for Facebook, facilitating data querying without the need for data replication to a native database. With built-in optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently directs all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, straight to Facebook. This harnesses server-side processing to rapidly retrieve the desired Facebook data.

Configure Facebook Connectivity for Alteryx

Connectivity to Facebook from Alteryx is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Facebook data from Alteryx, we start by creating and configuring a Facebook connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
2. Select "Facebook" from the Add Connection panel
3. Facebook uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Facebook.
4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Facebook Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Connect to Facebook from Alteryx

Once you establish a connection to Facebook in Connect Cloud, you are ready to work with Facebook data in Alteryx. To begin, download the ODBC Driver for CData Connect.

1. In the ODBC Driver for CData Connect, select OAuth and click Test Connection. Then enter your CData Connect Cloud Credentials and Sign in.
2. Open Alteryx Designer and create a new workflow.
3. Drag and drop a new input data tool onto the workflow.
4. Click the drop down under Connect a File or Database and select the Data sources tab.
5. Navigate to the end of the page and click on ODBC under Generic connection.
6. Select the DSN that you configured for use in Alteryx.
7. In the wizard that opens, drag and drop the table to be queried in the Query Builder box. Select the fields by checking the boxes that you wish to include in your query. Where possible, the complex queries generated by the filters and aggregations will be pushed down to your data source, while any unsupported operations (which can include SQL functions and JOIN operations) will be managed client-side by the CData SQL engine embedded in the connector.

To further customize the dataset, you can open the SQL Editor and modify the query manually, adding clauses, aggregations, and other operations to ensure that you are retrieving exactly the data desired.

With the query defined, you are ready to work with your data in Alteryx Designer.

Get CData Connect Cloud

To get live data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your SQL Server database, try CData Connect Cloud today!