Posted by Dee Elling Jan 28, 2017 In the first installment of this series, Get Started, you saw the different pages in Pronto and how to navigate between them. Now let's get some data into Pronto so you can make a nice report. This post uses Salesforce as an example, to give you an overview of how things work when connecting Pronto to a popular cloud application. If you want a step-by-step tutorial with sample data, see the Tutorial: Basic Excel. Connect to Data In the Connect page you either log in to a cloud application to access its tables, or upload a file of tables. After the connection, you select the tables you want to use, and, optionally, filter the rows to only get the ones you need. Once you identify the columns and rows you want, Birst extracts that data and then you can go to the Prepare page to perform additional refinements. Before you set up a cloud connection, make sure that you have the login credentials for the app. For example, a Salesforce.com connection requires a secret key password. For files, make sure they are less than 20mb in size. Connect to a Cloud Application In this overview you see screenshots of connections to Salesforce.com, but you can also connect to other cloud applications. There are two ways to add a connection to a data source: either click the icons on the right, or click the Add (+ sign) on the top left and then pick from the dropdown menu. 1
If you click click Add (+ sign), you see the list of possible connections. (The File import for Excel is not in this list, it is over to the right.) Each cloud application has its own login requirements, depending on the application. For example, Salesforce.com requires only a username and password concatenated with the secret key, of the format passwordxxxxx. You give the connection a name, the login details, and click Save. 2
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Once you save your connection, Pronto goes to the connected application or file and brings in the list of tables or spreadsheet tabs that it finds. The list of tables shows up in the left panel, and a preview of the first table and its first 100 rows shows in the main panel. If you uploaded a file, you'll see a list of tables from that file. For Excel files, there is a table for every sheet in the file. Since usually you don't want to use every table, next you pick the tables you want. Some applications have a LOT of tables, so Pronto makes it easy to find the most commonly used ones. Use the Recommendations menu to quickly pick a popular table or set of tables. Alternatively, use the Find an object search bar to find a table, or just scroll through the list. 4
When you select a table, a preview of its contents shows in the main panel. The preview shows 100 rows. Most of the time you do not need every column, so you can choose only the ones you want. Use the Deselect All and Search box at the top right to find and select the columns. Pronto highlights the columns you select. For each column you select, you can filter its rows, if you don't need every single row, by clicking the filter icon at the top of a column. The filter panel lets you select an operator such as equal to, greater than, less than, and not-equal to, and enter a relevant value. 5
When you enter a filter and click Apply, the preview panel updates showing only the rows that match the filter. A filter tag shows at the top of the table, one for every filter in the table. If you used a recommendation, make sure to scroll through the columns to see what was selected by default. Don't worry if you didn't get everything the first time, because you can always go back and update the connection's tables and rows later. When you are done selecting columns and adding filters, click Done at the bottom of the table list. 6
If there are a large number of rows, Pronto will let you know. This is to keep you from downloading a huge amount of data that you might not really need. If you see a warning, double-check your selections or add filters before proceeding. The Connect page refreshes, showing only the tables you selected, and a preview of all the rows. You can click Edit to continue refining the columns you want to select for each table. When you have everything you want, click Import at the bottom of the tables list. This time, Birst extracts all the data that matches the criteria you set up. The progress bar shows at the bottom left, and a success message appears at the upper right when it is done. Upload a File If you want to upload a file, when you create a connection choose the Import File option. Pronto supports the common, basic file types such as Excel and CSV. 7
Just like for cloud connections, Pronto shows a list of tables from that file and lets you further refine your selections. It hasn t yet uploaded all the rows; it shows only the first 100. After you make your refinements you can import all the data. For Excel files, there is a table for every tab in the worksheet. 8
At first all the sheets are grouped under the file listing and all the tables and their rows are selected. You can select or deselect from the listing, and on the right select only the columns you want to use. Just like with cloud connections, you can also filter the rows. Click Done to save these settings. Now Pronto knows what file to use and what content from that file to import. Click Import. Now all of your important data is in Birst and ready for a few final touches to prepare the source for reporting. You can create multiple prepared sources from the raw or extracted sources that you created in the Connect page. This is an efficient way to manage your reports, especially when you have different uses for the same tables. So the next step is to go to the Prepare page. 9
The Prepare page lists all your tables and has a work area for preparing sources. 10