Integrate Live Sugar CRM Data into Amazon SageMaker Canvas with RDS

Amazon SageMaker Canvas is a no-code machine learning platform that lets you generate predictions, prepare data, and build models without writing code. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Sugar CRM data for building custom machine-learning models, predicting customer churn, generating texts, building chatbots, and more. This article shows how to connect to Connect Cloud from Amazon SageMaker Canvas using the RDS connector and integrate live Sugar CRM data into your ML model deployments.

CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Sugar CRM, allowing you to easily integrate with live Sugar CRM data in Amazon SageMaker Canvas — without replicating the data. CData Connect Cloud looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Amazon SageMaker Canvas and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Sugar CRM, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Sugar CRM data.

Configure Sugar CRM Connectivity for Amazon SageMaker Canvas

Connectivity to Sugar CRM from Amazon SageMaker Canvas is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Sugar CRM data from Amazon SageMaker Canvas, we start by creating and configuring a Sugar CRM connection.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections, and click Add Connection.
2. Select "Sugar CRM" from the Add Connection panel.
3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Sugar CRM.

   The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SugarCRM user credentials. This will use the default OAuth token created to allow client logins. OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret are required if you do not wish to use the default OAuth token.

   You can generate a new OAuth consumer key and consumer secret in Admin -> OAuth Keys. Set the OAuthClientId to the OAuth consumer key. Set the OAuthClientSecret to the consumer secret.

   Additionally, specify the URL to the SugarCRM account.

   Note that retrieving SugarCRM metadata can be expensive. It is advised that you store the metadata locally as described in the "Caching Metadata" chapter of the help documentation.

4. Click Create & Test.
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Sugar CRM Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
2. On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give your PAT a name and click Create.
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Sugar CRM data from Amazon SageMaker Canvas.

Connecting to CData Connect Cloud from Amazon SageMaker Canvas

With the connection in CData Connect Cloud configured, you are ready to integrate live Sugar CRM data into Amazon SageMaker Canvas using its RDS connector.

1. Select a domain and user profile in Amazon SageMaker Canvas and click on "Open Canvas".
2. Once the Canvas application opens, navigate to the left panel, and select "My models".
3. Click on "Create new model" in the My models screen.
4. Specify a Model name in Create new model window and select a Problem type. Click on "Create".
5. Once the model version gets created, click on "Create dataset" in the Select dataset tab.
6. In the Create a tabular dataset window, add a "Dataset name" and click on "Create".
7. Click on the "Data Source" drop-down and search for or navigate to the RDS connector and click on " Add Connection".
8. In the Add a new RDS connection window, set the following properties:
   
   
   • Connection Name: a relevant connection name
   • Set Engine type to sqlserver-web
   • Set Port to 14333
   • Set Address as tds.cdata.com
   • Set Username to a Connect Cloud user (e.g. user@mydomain.com)
   • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
   • Set Database name the Sugar CRM connection (e.g., SugarCRM1)
9. Click on "Create connection".

Integrating Sugar CRM Data into Amazon SageMaker Canvas

With the connection to Connect Cloud configured in the RDS, you are ready to integrate live Sugar CRM data into your Amazon SageMaker Canvas dataset.

1. In the tabular dataset created in RDS with Sugar CRM data, search for the Sugar CRM connection configured on Connect Cloud in the search bar or from the list of connections.
2. Select the table of your choice from Sugar CRM, drag and drop it into the canvas on the right.
3. You can create workflows by joining any number of tables from the Sugar CRM connection (as shown below). Click on "Create dataset".
4. Once the dataset is created, click on "Select dataset" to build your model.
5. Perform analysis, generate prediction, and deploy the model.

At this point, you have access to live Sugar CRM data in Amazon SageMaker that you can utilize to build custom ML models to generate predictive business insights and grow your organization.

SQL Access to Sugar CRM Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Sugar CRM data from Amazon SageMaker Canvas. You can create more connections, datasets, and predictive models to drive business — all without replicating Sugar CRM data.

To get real-time data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, see the CData Connect Cloud.