Create Certinia Dashboards in Bold BI

Bold BI allows you to create, share, and collaborate on interactive BI dashboards. When paired with CData Connect Server, you get instant access to Certinia data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to create a virtual database for Certinia and build reports from Certinia data in Bold BI.

CData Connect Server provides a pure SQL Server interface for Certinia, allowing you to easily build reports from live Certinia data in Bold BI — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build visualizations, Bold BI 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 Certinia, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Certinia data.

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

   There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Certinia: login credentials, SSO, and OAuth.

   Authenticating with a Login and Token

   Set the User and Password to your login credentials. Additionally, set the SecurityToken. By default, the SecurityToken is required, but you can make it optional by allowing a range of trusted IP addresses.

   To disable the security token:

   1. Log in to Certinia and enter "Network Access" in the Quick Find box in the setup section.
   2. Add your IP address to the list of trusted IP addresses.

   To obtain the security token:

   1. Open the personal information page on certinia.com.
   2. Click the link to reset your security token. The token will be emailed to you.
   3. Specify the security token in the SecurityToken connection property or append it to the Password.

   Authenticating with OAuth

   If you do not have access to the user name and password or do not want to require them, use the OAuth user consent flow. See the OAuth section in the Help for an authentication guide.

   Connecting to Certinia Sandbox Accounts

   Set UseSandbox to true (false by default) to use a Certinia sandbox account. Ensure that you specify a sandbox user name in User.

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 Certinia data from Bold BI.

Visualize Live Certinia Data in Bold BI

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect Server from Bold BI to create a new Certinia data source and build a simple visualization from the data.

1. Log into your Bold BI instance, click the data sources tab, create a new data source, and choose the SQL Server connector.
2. Choose the basic configuration and set the connection properties:
   • Name: Name your connection
   • Server name: Your Connect Server instance (CONNECT_SERVER_URL)
   • Port: 1433
   • Username: Your Connect Server username
   • Password: Your Connect Server password
   • Mode: Choose Live to query Certinia on-demand or choose Extract to load the data into Bold BI
   • Database: Choose the database you created from the drop-down menu (certiniadb)
3. Click Connect
4. Select the table to visualize and drag it onto the workspace.
5. Select a visualization style and add it to the report.
6. Click the gear icon for the visualization to configure the visualization properties and assign columns to the visualization.

SQL Access to Certinia Data from Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Certinia data from your Bold BI workbook. You can create more data sources and new visualizations, build reports, and more — all without replicating Certinia data.

To get SQL data access to 200+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your applications, see the CData Connect page.