Bridge between CCH Tagetik and Microsoft Power BI

Introduction

Data visualization tools like Microsoft Power BI or Qlik are very ‘hot’ these days as they transform your at-first-sight boring datasets into appealing reports and highly interactive dashboards! With Power BI, you can say goodbye to staring at endless spreadsheets and welcome visualizing your data in a way that is both fun and very informative. The goal of these ‘self-service’ BI tools is to help you uncover hidden insights and share them within your organization in a way that's both pleasant and useful. So fasten your seatbelt and get ready to witness some magic happening to your spreadsheet data.

What to expect?

This insight article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the components involved in setting up the bridge between CCH Tagetik and MS Power BI, making use of a REST API on the OData component.

Block Architecture

Tagetik allows to access its data via REST APIs using the OData protocol. Popular self-service BI tools such as Power BI or Qlik can as such access the data directly via secure HTTPs requests. When opting for Power BI, leveraging the standard ‘Wolters Kluwer CCH Tagetik Power BI Connector offers you an out-of-the-box connection with add-on functionality that will truly make your life easy.

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Architecture - CCH Tagetik to MS PBI or QLIK

 

The above architecture gives a brief overview of the components which are involved while retrieving the data from the CCH Tagetik platform into the Power BI data model.

The CCH Tagetik data is accessible to the external tool via different types of REST APIs such as SCIM, Swagger and OData which provide secure access to the data. Refreshing the Power BI data model will create the data pull requests via the OData connector towards CCH Tagetik, to retrieve that data, which is exposed by CCH Tagetik via the REST API gateway.

The data flow between Power BI and CCH Tagetik is always encrypted via the secure HTTPS protocol, which adds a layer of security.

Next to that, we have the User Authentication which can be configured within the CCH Tagetik Administrative module, by choosing either of the below options

  • Basic authentication
  • OAuth2 authentication

The preferred and most secure setup is to use the OAuth2 authentication, as it provides much stronger security for the data.

Building Blocks

CCH Tagetik is an integrated Corporate Performance Management platform solution for processes such as Legal and Management Consolidation, Financial Close, Forecasting, Budgeting, Integrated Financial Planning and Disclosure Management and much more. CCH Tagetik is available both on-premise and as a cloud solution, both on AWS or on Microsoft Azure cloud environments.

CCH Tagetik helps to unify budgeting, planning & forecasting processes at the strategic, corporate and operational levels. Budgets, plans and forecast data are stored together with the consolidated actuals in the same software solution.

 

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MS Power BI Logo

Microsoft Power BI is a visualization & Business Intelligence solution that helps you create stunning reports & dashboards. It is one of the market-leading reporting and dashboarding tools. It is characterized by its ease of use, self-service-BI capabilities, and attractive price offering.

Power BI Desktop is a free application you can install on your local computer that lets you connect to, transform, and visualize your data. With Power BI Desktop, you can connect to multiple different sources of data, and combine them (often referred to as data modelling) into a data model that lets you build visuals, and collections of visuals you can share as reports, with other people inside your organization. Most users who work on Business Intelligence projects use Power BI Desktop to create reports and then use the Power BI service to share their reports with others. 

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Odata Logo

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an ISO/IEC-approved OASIS standard, that defines the best practices for data consumption via REST APIs. OData helps you to focus on your business logic while building REST APIs, without having to worry about the various technical approaches to define request and response headers, status codes, HTTP methods, URL conventions, media types, payload formats, query options, etc.

OData REST APIs are easy to consume and readily available as connectors for the reporting tools such as MS Power BI, Qlik etc.

How to Integrate CCH Tagetik with Power BI

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Integration - CCH Tagetik with Power BI

Expose CCH Tagetik via OData

When CCH Tagetik is deployed on the cloud, it is necessary to expose the data using the REST API and OData service to allow third-party BI tools such as MS Power BI, QLIK, etc. to read and display it.

The OData protocol eases access to the data from external connectors such as the out-of-the-box ‘Wolter Kluwer CCH Tagetik Power BI Connector’ without opening a direct connection to the database. Via HTTPs requests, it accesses the data directly and securely.

The ‘Wolter Kluwer CCH Tagetik Power BI Connector’, extracts the data from the Analytical Information Hub layer and feeds it into the Power BI data module where eventually also other data sources can be added to allow building insightful reports and dashboards.

The Power BI connector from CCH Tagetik offers several advantages over a regular OData connector, since it's more than just a data pass-trough, and offers some specific Tagetik functionality also in Power BI:

  • Real-time Currency conversion
  • Segment reporting will allow you to present real-time consolidation
  • Direct access to the period length measure will allow you to easily report across cumulated  and periodic data without hassle
  • Financial Statement Template (FST’s) allow you to benefit from your reporting definitions directly in Power Bi
  • Grouping the category members allows you to express multi-Gaap data views in reports and dashboards
  • Inheriting user rights allow secured rollout across the user population

Data Modelling and Reporting

MS Power BI is a collection of services, apps and connectors that work together to collate disparate sources of data, such as structured data from SQL database, Excel, CSV, Cubes etc along with unstructured data like invoice images, supporting documents or even videos etc which can be blended with CCH Tagetik data into a coherent, visually appealing and interactive insight, report, or dashboard, That can be embedded within the CCH Tagetik user interface or landing page.

Conclusion

Adding MS Power BI or Qlik for visualization of CCH Tagetik data is very worthwhile and the standard Power BI connector available for CCH Tagetik truly makes it easy to use.  Discover the dynamic features of a powerful and user-friendly data discovery interface, you'll feel like a superhero flying through mountains of data, uncovering hidden valuable insights for your organization. So what are you waiting for? Go for it and unleash the power of Power BI with CCH Tagetik.

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