Connecting EA to Snowflake

Technology is paving way for rapid transformative changes in the living style of people. And in this rapidly changing world, business data plays a vital role in every decision. The introduction of Tableau CRM (formerly Einstein Analytics) will help us in providing unjust insights within the native CRM. This makes Tableau CRM the most efficient analytics solution provider for everyone.

Sometimes, data sits outside the CRM platform such as Legacy Systems & ERP or inside modern technology such as mobile or the IoT enabled devices. To use such data for analytics in order to improve business, we need to integrate it with CRM so that the biz teams become more aware by getting 360° view of the Customer.

Snowflake is a cloud data platform that provides a data warehouse-as-a-service designed for the cloud. Tableau CRM can help you in unlocking the insights on all the data present in Snowflake.

Data Connectors of Tableau CRM:

Tableau CRM has numerous OOTB connectors that are built inside it. For connecting to the Snowflake there are two types of connectors present:

1. Database Connector

2. Direct Data — Snowflake

EA Direct data enables the user to explore the data without having to import it into the EA platform. These can be later used to get deep insights.

Implementation:

1. Create a Snowflake Account:

To proceed with the implementation, we need to first create a snowflake trial account using this link.

2. Create Objects in Snowflake:

Create Warehouse:

Here we need to create a virtual warehouse.

Create Database:

As part of the next steps, we will create a snowflake database as per snips.

Navigate to the database created and create Schema.

Once we are done with the schema creation we will be creating a table to store data.

We will be using a CSV for populating the data of the table. Below is the sample CSV.

Now create a table and its columns according to CSV. Assign the schema created in the previous step to this table.

Once table creation is done, navigate to the table and click on load data.

Assign the Warehouse to the table and load data.

Select the source of the data, in our case, it's a CSV file. We can get data from other external sources as well.

Now we will be creating a file format for uploading the data. Click on ‘+’ sign and create a file format.

Snowflakes default file format matches with the CSV, we just need to enter the name of the format and save it.

Once the format is created we can click on Load and our data will be loaded into the table.

3. Create EA Data Connection

Since we are done with the Snowflake setup. Now we will create the EA data connection to import the data from Snowflake.

Login to EA and navigate to the data manager.

In the ‘Connect’ tab click on the ‘Connect to Data’.

Under the ‘Input Connections’ tab click on ‘Add Connection’ and select Snowflake Connector as a source.

Enter the following details to set up the connection:

• Connection Name: Any Name
• Developer Name: Any Name
• Description: Any description
• Schema: Snowflake schema name that you want to import
• Password: Snowflake password
• Database: Snowflake database name that you want to use
• Warehouse: Snowflake warehouse
• Account Name: My Snowflake URL is https://kt50301.ap-south-1.aws.snowflakecomputing.com/ so my account name will be kt50301.ap-south-1.

Once all these details have filled then click on Save & Test. You will be able to see a success message.

Press continue and you will see the established connection in your EA instance.

Click on the connection and select the table you want to import.

Once you have selected the table then you need to select the fields from that table on the next screen.

Click on continue to preview the data and hit the save button to complete the connection setup.

After this, simply create a dataflow to digest the data from the connection and register it as a dataset in the org.

Now, you can use this dataset for diving deep into the data.

Direct Data connection with Snowflake has been introduced in the Winter ’21 release of Salesforce, where we can use the data directly from the Snowflake without moving any data to the EA instance.

We will be discussing this in our next post.