Explore Geographical Relationships in Sage 50 UK Data with Power Map

The CData ODBC Driver for Sage 50 UK is easy to set up and use with self-service analytics solutions like Power BI: Microsoft Excel provides built-in support for the ODBC standard. This article shows how to load the current Sage 50 UK data into Excel and start generating location-based insights on Sage 50 UK data in Power Map.

Create an ODBC Data Source for Sage 50 UK

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Note: Only Sage 50 UK 2012 and above are supported.

The User and Password properties, under the Connection section, must be set to valid Sage 50 UK user credentials. These values will be the same used to log in to the Sage 50 UK software.

Additionally, the URL property, under the Connection section, will need to be set to the address of the company dataset desired. To obtain the address, do the following:

1. If you have not already done so, open the Sage 50 UK software.
2. Click Tools -> Internet Options.
3. Select the SData Settings tab.
4. Click the Details button next to Sage 50 Accounts. A window is displayed containing a list of company names along with the address to their corresponding datasets.
5. Set the URL property to the value in the address field next to the company desired.

When you configure the DSN, 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.

When you configure the DSN, 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.

Import Sage 50 UK Data into Excel

You can import data into Power Map either from an Excel spreadsheet or from Power Pivot. For a step-by-step guide to use either method to import Sage 50 UK data, see the "Using the ODBC Driver" section in the help documentation.

Geocode Sage 50 UK Data

After importing the Sage 50 UK data into an Excel spreadsheet or into PowerPivot, you can drag and drop Sage 50 UK entities in Power Map. To open Power Map, click any cell in the spreadsheet and click Insert -> Map.

In the Choose Geography menu, Power Map detects the columns that have geographic information. In the Geography and Map Level menu in the Layer Pane, you can select the columns you want to work with. Power Map then plots the data. A dot represents a record that has this value. When you have selected the geographic columns you want, click Next.

Select Measures and Categories

You can then simply select columns: Measures and categories are automatically detected. The available chart types are Stacked Column, Clustered Column, Bubble, Heat Map, and Region.