Connect Reference

The Modeler Connect page is where you log into a cloud application, a database, or upload a file. You can preview and search the sheets or tables, select tables and columns, and filter the rows to bring into Birst. The left side of the screen lists the tables, and the right side previews the rows and columns.

  • The preview in the Connect screen uses 100 rows.
  • Filters do not yet support wildcards or partial strings.
  • When you've finished selecting columns and setting filters, click Done to save the definition of the connection.
  • For now the definition supports ANDs, not ORs.
  • Click Import to pull the data into Birst.
  • The Importing progress bar shows at the bottom left, and you can cancel it if needed.
  • Birst treats Integer type columns as measures.

Connection Notes

Dropbox Connection

  • A Dropbox connection requires a Dropbox account.
  • The following file types are supported:
    • .csv file
    • Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
    • ZIP (.zip) of the above
  • You can select a folder and all of its supported files will be downloaded. Subfolders will not be downloaded.
  • See the ThinkTank video Connecting to Your Dropbox from Modeler.

Import File

  • The Import File functionality supports the following file types (that this is a subset of the old file upload functionality):
    • .csv file
    • Excel (.xls, .xlsx) with MS Office 97-2003, excluding crosstab and password-protected files
    • Excel (.xls, .xlsx) with MS Office 2007-2013, excluding crosstab and password-protected files
    • ZIP (.zip) files of the above, without password protection
  • Scheduling file imports is not supported.
  • ZIP files with password protection are not supported.
  • International characters (multi-byte) are supported.
  • File Import has the same limits as usual, 20mb.
  • Notes and Caveats for Excel files:
    • Excel files that are password-protected are not supported.
    • Crosstab Excel files are not supported.
    • File and sheet (tab) names with the following characteristics will be changed in Modeler:
      • Leading and trailing spaces will be replaced by underscores (_)
      • The characters periods (.), asterisk (*), back slashes (\), forward slashes (/), colons (:), question marks (?), single quote marks ('), quote marks ("), less than (<), greater than (>), and pipe (|), will be replaced by underscores(_)
    • An Excel sheet (tab) becomes a table in Modeler. A file with multiple sheets will result in multiple tables.
    • Birst has no percentage or currency datatypes, so a column formatted as percentage in Excel does not appear as expected in Birst.
    • Modeler uses the first non-empty row of a sheet to create the table column names.
    • There are limitations on column names and Modeler will change the content accordingly:
      • Modeler does not support Excel files that have double tildes (~~) in either the file name or in any workbook or sheet name.
      • The following characters are deleted from column names: tilde (~), acute (`), asterisk (*), left and right parenthesis, (()), plus (+), equals (=), pipe (|), left and right brackets ({}), left and right square braces ([]), single quote mark ('), double quote mark ("), question mark (?), period (.), and comma (,)
      • For Excel file imports, column names that contain only the unsupported characters listed above will be named "sourceName Column1", "sourceName Column2", etc. Modeler generates the column names when data exists in the first 100 rows of the source.
      • Leading or trailing spaces are removed.
      • The following characters are supported: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _, !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, \, -, :, ;, /, <, >

Google Analytics Connection

A Google Analytics connection requires a Google Analytics account that tracks one or more websites.

Jira Connection

A Jira connection requires a user account that is enabled for the Jira API. Make sure that your Jira user account has that functionality enabled.

Filters are only supported on the Issue table.

Marketo Connection

A Marketo connection requires a Marketo REST API account user endpoint, client ID, and client secret. To find the endpoint, log in to Marketo as the REST API user and select Admin - Web Services - Integration. To find the client ID and client secret, log in to Marketo as the REST API user and select Admin - Integration - Launch Point.

Salesforce Connection

  • A Salesforce connection requires a a username and secret key password. Make sure your Salesforce account uses a secret key password. Contact your Salesforce Administrator for assistance.
  • When entering a secret key password in Birst, use the format passwordtoken. Your Salesforce password and security token must be concatenated.
  • Some Salesforce tables are not supported by the Salesforce API, and therefore are not displayed in Modeler.