Overview
When you have defined a Dataset for a specific purpose, you can easily look up its service endpoints and access keys so you can consume its data from an external application, such as a reporting tool.
Bizagi Datasets supports being consumed as an OData feed (through an OData RESTful service) using Basic authentication.
For introductory information on Datasets, refer to Bizagi datasets.
This section describes how to use information stored in a Dataset from outside of Bizagi applications.
Before you continue
These steps assume you have created a Dataset and populated it with information (either real information or placeholder information for testing purposes).
For more information about this step, refer to Creating a dataset.
What you need to do
To have your external application integrate a Bizagi Dataset as a source of data, carry out these steps:
1.Obtain the service endpoint and its access keys to let you use the connector.
2.Configure the connection in your external application.
Example
For this example, we created a Dataset with column definitions to match a .csv sample downloadable at http://samplecsvs.s3.amazonaws.com/SalesJan2009.csv (from this Insurance service company's site: https://support.spatialkey.com/spatialkey-sample-csv-data/).
We populated with data from that .csv file.
You can confirm that this sample .csv file has information like this:
We use Power BI to create a report based on this data:
Procedure
Once you have the Dataset ready, follow these steps:
1. Obtain the service endpoint and its access keys to let you use the connector.
Go to the Dataset's environment (for instance, Development), and select the Security & Connectivity tab.
To prepare for the configuration with your external tool, copy the service endpoint and access keys.
Use the Copy URL and Copy Key buttons:
•ODATA URL (the service endpoint that exposes data to be consumed by external applications):
•Access key 1 (username) and Access key 2 (password):
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DO NOT use the Generate new keys option unless you are certain you want to generate new access keys and eliminate the existing ones. Once you eliminate existing keys, you cannot look them up or use them again. This means that any connector's configuration or application already using the existing pair of keys would no longer be able to connect to the service endpoint. |
2. Configure the connection in your external application.
Open the application of your choice and configure a new connection to an OData source.
if you use Power BI, for instance, locate the Get data option and select OData feed:
For the URL field, provide the OData URL you copied from the Dataset's connectivity information.
Click OK and, in the next screen, enter the username and password (for Basic authentication), that you copied from the connectivity information (Access key 1 and Access key 2, respectively).
You can leave the default root for the service endpoint. Click Connect:
In the next screen you can preview the values that will be imported as data.
Check the values checkbox. Then click Load:
Once the data finishes loading (this may take a minute or two, depending on the volume of information), you can start using your reporting application's features. In Power BI you can build charts and reports:
And that's it.
At this point, you have configured an external application to generate graphic reports on data coming from the Dataset.
You can carry out the same procedure for other applications such as Microsoft Excel:
With Excel you can view and filter data, and include charts:
