This article is a guest post from Databox consulting partners,Michael PaladiniandShafeeq Rahiman.ofAnalysis Factory, a 15-year-old business intelligence consulting firm.

在分析工厂，我们的团队一直在实施财富500强企业的数据可视化，这是2世纪的更好的部分。回到开始时，我们必须从头开始，拉动和存储数据，编写代码和设计图表。现在，我们使用DataBox，Tableau和其他beplay体育appios工具等系统来更容易地可视化数据，通常是从源中的源，没有所需的编码或数据操纵。

If you’re one of the thousands of Databox users, you probably didn’t code anything to get your visualizations either. In fact, most Databox users simply use an ever-growing本机连接列表(e.g. HubSpot, Facebook ads, Google Analytics, AdWords, Localytics, Salesforce, MailChimp, etc.) – all built by the Databox team – to very quickly visualize data from 100s of sources.

Why You Might Need a Custom Data Connector

However, most enterprise Databox users need to pull in additional data from other places. When users needs to pull in data from other systems, that’s where we excel. For decades we’ve been connecting to data from a myriad of sources and then building visualizations, often in HTML. While Databox makes it easy to build stunning mobile, desktop, and TV reports — no HTML or coding needed — there may be technical work required to connect to some data sources.

Larger enterprises have a long list of sources and apps from which they might need to pull data, such as:

• 企业销售和市场应用AP, Microsoft Dynamics, Eloqua and Marketo.
• Financial data, such as FactSet.
• Nielsen data for media saturation.

但它没有结束。许多企业还需要可视化存储在防火墙后面的企业应用程序中的数据。这么多的管理数据也仍然存在于独立的电子表格中。

So, how does all this disparate data flow into Databox, and more importantly, into your data visualizations and analyses? Via custom connectors.

在我们描述如何自定义连接器Databox work, though, let’s define what we mean by native connectors more clearly. Databox’s native connectors provide integration with a wide variety of popular cloud services: preconfigured data connections and metrics that work right out of the box. With these native connectors – accessed with a click or two – you can pull in data and build reports using their drag and drop report building interface. You can configure mobile reports (Datacards), desktop/TV reports (Datawalls), set goals, set up email alerts and push notifications — all without writing a line of code or even looking at your data.

当数据无法通过DataBox的本机连接器中的一个无法删除时，这是您需要自定义连接器时。beplay体育appios虽然这需要一些数据准备，但一旦自定义集成完成，这些非本机数据源可以与DataBox系统内的本机数据源无缝使用。beplay体育appios

这是它的工作原理：

此自定义集成层允许从云或企业防火墙中的源代码或从企业防火墙中汇总来自不同数据源的数据。

使用自定义连接器，您可以在DataBox中直接从几乎任何源中融合数据，然后在手机，桌面，DataWall或AppleWatch®上访问强大的数据可视化中的所有KPI。beplay体育appios

如何构建自定义数据连接器来拉动任何数据

To demonstrate how custom connectors can be leveraged, we’ll share how we built a sales and marketing dashboard with data from multiple data sources.

在较大的组织中，此数据通常在防火墙层和公司繁文缛节的层下方藏起来。具有讽刺意味的是，许多销售和营销领导者仍然依赖独立的电子表格来设置和跟踪目标。（管理团队爱他们的电子表格！）尽管如此，数据无关紧要。

因此，对于此示例，我们将从企业销售和营销部门连接到DataMox的示例数据库，构建查询，从混合数据中拔出特定的洞察力，然后设置数据计算，海关，以及警报。beplay体育appios

There are several different approaches to connecting Enterprise data to Databox. For this example we’ll upload the Enterprise data into a cloud database, then use AzureSQL to connect the database to Databox.

当您将数据与不同的企业源组合联系到DataBox时，请记住某些点数：beplay体育appios

1. Identify all organizational metrics needed for your reporting. What business issues does your Datawall or Datacard need to address? What metrics need to be tracked to answer these questions? What goals need to be identified? What alerts need to be set?
2. Identify how and where these metrics are generated and maintained within the organization. Are they in databases? Spreadsheets? Are they in a format that will allow systematic access such as web service/Excel spreadsheets on the network?

下一步是在云中为此数据构建一个家庭，有时被称为“数据集市”。对于我们的演示，我们将AzuresQL选择为云数据库。

我们的Sample Cloud Data Mart包括来自两个组织来源的数据，这些来源更新信息，销售和营销。随着每个部门的数据从源应用程序更新，数据集市也将被更新。我们正在使用DataBox-Azbeplay体育appiosuresQL集成来连接到数据MART，然后使用此云数据查询和构建数据可视化。（beplay体育appiosDataBox为其他几个提供了一个很棒的连接器SQL数据库too, includingMySQLandAWS红移.)

Under数据管理器，我们将配置两个数据源以连接到我们的AzuresQL数据库。

Once activated, the data sources appear in the Data Manager list of sources.

Then we can write SQL queries using the “Query Builder” tab:

We can create as many queries as we want under a single data source. The queries define the cross-section of data to be displayed in Databox. Here is a look at the query used in our demo:

Queries can be run and tested on this same screen within Databox, and results can be viewed and verified.

Then we set up data calculations inside Databox, as well as custom goals within the app.Data calculationsenable you to create on-the-fly calculations, regardless of whether the fields for calculations originate from a single data source or different data sources. For example, you can set up a data calculation with your Google Analytics data (from the native Google Analytics connector) and your custom sales data (from your sales database).

以下是使用销售和营销数据库数据的计算：

We can set up customgoals使用云数据：

Notificationscan be sent as push notifications, emails and even as Slack messages. We’ll set up an alert for the sales leadership team that notifies them they don’t attain $15K in new revenue in a day, sent as a push notification to mobile users.

To set up an alert, locate the ‘Notifications’ tab, and navigate to the ‘警报’ sub tab. The rules for notifications allow you to decide which metric in the data needs to be monitored. Here’s the alert for sales not attaining $15K in a day:

以下是通知在移动设备上显示的方式：

最后，这是我们创建的基于此数据集的DataCard和DataWall。如果你想试试一个Live Version.，只是遵循this关联。

With Databox, we have the ability to visualize any data we can get access to.使用本机连接器，Zapier Connections.或SQL连接，我们可以将数据添加到DataBox中。beplay体育appios从那里，DataMox比beplay体育appios以往任何时候都更容易，以便可视化，跟踪进入目标，并通过DataBox警报计划（或庆祝它）来提醒您的团队。

Hopefully, the step-by-step procedure we’ve laid out above helps your organization get up and running with Databox and on your path to being more data-driven. If you want to discuss how to visualize any data from anywhere with the experts at Analysis Factory,drop us a line谈谈你的项目。