In this article, we will learn how to import LinkedIn data in Power BI. For that, we will create a successful OAuth Connection then request for reading LinkedIn Profile data and loading into Power BI

Power BI is a very popular Business Analytic tool used to get business information. It is very popular because it is easy to install, simple to learn and very intuitive. Also, REST API is very popular these days and we wanted to show you a way to integrate them in Power BI with the help of the ZappySys ODBC PowerPack. This software includes powerful drivers to query REST API URL, Local XML / JSON files and XML SOAP Web Service with simple SQL queries.

In nutshell, this post will focus on how to call LinkedIn API using Zappysys ODBC PowerPack. So let’s get started

Prerequisite

1. First, you will need to have our ZappySys ODBC Power Pack
2. In the second place, you will need to have internet access
3. On third place, Power BI Desktop (FREE) installed

Getting Started

In order to start, we will show several examples. ZappySys ODBC PowerPack includes the ZappySys JSON Driver that will help you to call LinkedIn API, retrieve basic profile data from LinkedIn and load profile data in Power BI. To learn more about LinkedIn API check this help file.

Call LinkedIn API using ZappySys JSON Driver

To access LinkedIn data using REST API call you need to create a LinkedIn app. See this article, it has mentioned the steps for How to register an App in LinkedIn. once you registered OAuth app in the LinkedIn website we can move to ODBC DataSources(DSN) Part.

1. Double-click on the ODBC Data Sources App.
   

   Open ODBC Data Sources from Startup menu

2. Click on Add button in User DSN Tab and then select JSON Driver from the driver list and click on Finish button to Create a new JSON Driver.
   

   ODBC User DSN Tab: Add new Driver Screen

3. Enter API URL in Properties Tab. Here is the sample Example:
   

   https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~:(id,firstName,lastName,headline,num-connections)?format=json

   Select a type of Connection from the Connection drop-down. here for this call, we have to select OAuth Connection.
   

   ZappySys ODBC JSON Driver: Configurations settings for LinkedIn API

4. Configure new OAuth Connection for LinkedIn as below.
   Basically, you need to enter 3 pieces on the General tab (i.e. ClientId, ClientSecret, Scopes) and one more info on the Advanced tab (i.e. callback URL ). If you are not sure what is Scope then check this LinkedIn API documentation. For each API page, you will see which permission needed. Just include the desired scope on ZappySys OAuth Connection (see below).
   

   OAuth Connection Manager: Configure the settings for LinkedIn

   also, Enter your Callback URL in Advanced Tab.

   

   OAuth Connection Manager: Configurations settings for LinkedIn in Advanced Tab

5. After successfully establishing the Connection with LinkedIn, you can Click on Test Connection button.
   

   ODBC JSON Driver: Test Connection for LinkedIn API Request

6. now, let’s go to Preview tab and click on the Preview data
   

   ODBC JSON Driver: Preview Screen of LinkedIn API Request

7. And that’s it, Now we will move forward to the next Phase i.e To Load data in Power BI

Load data into Power BI

In the preview section, we configured and added the ZappySys drivers in the ODBC Driver Administrator with information to connect to LinkedIn REST API. We queried the REST API data in JSON format. Now we will open Power BI and import the information from ODBC.

1. Open Power BI Desktop and select the option Get data
   
   

   Power BI: Click on Get Data for Loading from ODBC DSN

2. Get Data will allow adding the ZappySys ODBC driver. Go to Other and select ODBC.
   
   

   Select ODBC from Get Data Popup in Power BI

3. Select ODBC DSN name from the DSN dropdown, and click on OK button for Import data
   

   Get data from ODBC Driver

4. Select data to import and click OK (Below screenshot is for the Table mode import when no SQL specified. You can pick the desired table to import)
   

   see the Preview of Linked In data

5. See the Imported data in table visualization mode. you can select any visualizations as per your need.
   

   Power BI Imported LinkedIn data in Table Visualization

6. That’s All 🙂 you have successfully imported the LinkedIn data in Power BI dashboard.

Conclusion

In this blog, we have learned how to retrieve the basic profile data from LinkedIn using ODBC JSON Driver and then Load those data in Power BI with ODBC DSN in a very simple way. You can achieve many more functionalities with the use of ODBC PowerPack. Check our blogs/articles on How to import REST API in Power BI (Load JSON / SOAP XML) to find out what these ODBC Drivers are capable of more.

How to import REST API in Power BI (Load JSON / SOAP XML)

References

Finally, you can use the following links for more information about the use of LinkedIn API with our ODBC PowerPack:

• LinkedIn Documentation for API
• https://zappysys.com/blog/howto-import-json-rest-api-power-bi/

The post How to Import LinkedIn data in Power BI appeared first on ZappySys Blog.

In this blog, we will learn How to read LinkedIn data in SSIS and load into SQL Server Table, along with few other topics such as how to register an OAuth App for LinkedIn REST API Call, how to retrieve basic profile data from LinkedIn, how to share a post on LinkedIn with SSIS.

We will go through the steps to read data from LinkedIn and Load into SQL Server using  SSIS REST API Task and SSIS JSON Source.

In nutshell, this post will focus on how to call LinkedIn API using SSIS.

So let’s get started.

Prerequisite

1. First, you will need to have SSIS installed
2. Secondly, make sure to have SSDT
3. Finally, do not forget to install ZappySys SSIS PowerPack

What is LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for the business community. It provides an online platform for the professionals to connect with past and current colleagues. A user can increase their number of business connections, network within their industry, discuss business ideas, search for jobs and look for new hires.

Getting Started

In order to start, we will show several examples. ZappySys includes an SSIS REST API Task and SSIS JSON Source that will help you to call LinkedIn API, retrieve basic profile data from LinkedIn, share a post on LinkedIn with SSIS and do many more actions using REST API. To learn more about LinkedIn API check this help file.

Create LinkedIn App (for OAuth)

To access LinkedIn data using REST API call you need to create a LinkedIn app. Follow steps mentioned below to register LinkedIn OAuth App:

1. you can directly login to the LinkedIn site with your credentials, and redirect to the LinkedIn Developer Console for creating an app.
2. you can open MyApps Page.
   

   LinkedIn My Apps

3. Click on Create Application button, the new Application form appears, Fill it up.
   

   Linked In: Create New Application Form

4. Once you are done with the Creation of an App, you can see the Authentication tab.
   Enter Authorized Redirect URL there and you have your App’s Client ID and Client Secret.
   

   LinkedIn App: Authentication Tab

   Now we are ready with an App. Let´s start with an example. In this example, we will show how to retrieve basic profile data from LinkedIn and share a post on LinkedIn with SSIS.

Load LinkedIn data to SQL Server using SSIS JSON Source

Now once you registered OAuth app in the LinkedIn website we can move to SSIS Part.

1. Create a new SSIS Project or Open Existing Project in Visual Studio  (File > New > Project > Business Intelligence > Integration Services)
2. Once SSIS Package is open, Goto Data Flow Section, Drag and Drop ZS JSON Source Component from the SSIS Toolbox.
   

   Drag and Drop JSON Source Component

3. Double click on that Component to Edit the Configurations. Select File path or web URL from the Access Mode drop-down.
   Enter Web URL like this:
   

   https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~:(id,firstName,lastName,headline,num-connections)?format=json

   

   JSON Source: Enter the Request URL

4. Check Use Credentials Option and select a new ZS-OAUTH connection from the drop-down.
5. Configure new OAuth Connection for LinkedIn as below.
   Basically, you need to enter 3 pieces on the General tab (i.e. ClientId, ClientSecret, Scopes) and one more info on the Advanced tab (i.e. callback URL ). If you are not sure what is Scope then check this linkedin API documentation. For each API page you will see which permission needed. Just include the desired scope on ZappySys OAuth Connection (see below).
   

   LinkedIn Connection: OAuth Connection Manager

   also, Enter your Callback URL in Advanced Tab.

   

   LinkedIn Connection: OAuth Connection Manager Advanced Tab

   NOTE: If you are experiencing problems when authenticating, select Custom OAuth Provider and follow Microsoft Docs on how to authenticate.
6. Click on Preview button to see the response data.
   

   JSON Source: Preview basic profile of a LinkedIn user

7. Click OK to save JSON Source settings.
8. Drag any destination (i.e. OLEDB Destination) from your SSIS toolbox. For demo purpose, we will load LinkedIn data into SQL Server Table.
9. Configure OLEDB Destination (Select Connection and Target Table). You can Create new Table for the destination by clicking NEW next to Table drop-down.
10. Click on the Columns Tab to configure Mappings. Click OK to save.
11. And that’s it. Execute your package to Load LinkedIn data to SQL Server.

Share a Post on LinkedIn (Use SSIS REST API Task)

Now let’s look at one more example to call LinkedIn REST API. This time we will share a post on LinkedIn Page using REST API call in SSIS. For this, we will use SSIS REST API Task

1. First of All, Goto Control Flow Section, Drag and Drop SSIS REST API Task from the SSIS Toolbox.
   

   Drag and Drop REST API Task

2. Double click on that Component to Edit the Configurations. Configure the task like the below-attached screesnshot.
   

   Request URL: 
   https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~/shares?format=json
   
   Request Body: 
   {
     "comment": "Hello, This is test message posted by Hardik from SSIS Package",
     "visibility": {
       "code": "anyone"
     }
   }

   

   REST API Task: Configurations

3. now you are done with the configurations. you can do Test Request/Response. See the below-attached request/response screen.
   

   Share Post on LinkedIn: Test Request/Response

4. Goto your LinkedIn Profile, you can see the latest Post which is posted by us with the use of ZappySys and SSIS.
   

   Share a Post on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Activity Screen

5. You can Share a Post with a Specific Values too. See the Below example we have added title, description, submitted URL, submitted image URL.
   

   Request Body:
   
   {
     "comment": "Check out ZappySys's Latest Product ODBC PowerPack ",
     "content": {
       "title": "ODBC PowerPack",
       "description": "ODBC PowerPack is a collection of high-performance ODBC API Drivers for various API data source (i.e. Web API, REST API, JSON, XML, SOAP, OData). With simple and familiar SQL query language you can read/query data from API sources or JSON / XML Files inside your favorite Data Engine / Reporting / ETL tools (i.e. SQL Server,  Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, SSRS, Informatica, Excel, SSIS). Using our API drivers you can consume data from local files or connect to virtually any API data source (internal or cloud API) such as Amazon AWS API, Salesforce API, Google API (i.e. Analytics, AdWords, DoubleClick), Facebook, Twitter, Zendesk, eBay and many more.",
       "submitted-url": "https://zappysys.com/products/odbc-powerpack/",  
       "submitted-image-url": "https://zappysys.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/slider-odbc-powerpack-rest-api-json-xml-drivers-1.png"
     },
     "visibility": {
       "code": "anyone"
     }  
   }

   

   Share a Post on LinkedIn with Specific Values

6. see the latest Post which is posted by us with the use of ZappySys and SSIS.
   

   Share a Post with Specific values on LinkedIn: LinkedIn Activity Screen

VERY Important – About Refresh Token / Access Token

As of now Linkedin allows only one active Access Token. Which means if you Regenerate token on OAuth connection manager then any previously generated token becomes invalid so always use just one Linked Shared Connection in your package / solution or parameterize Package level connection with same access token.

https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/Refresh-Tokens-with-OAuth-2#

Access Token you generate on OAuth Connection manager expires after 60 days and after 60 days unfortunately you have to re-authorize (3-Legged) to get new token. This is limitation imposed by linkedin  which may change in future but unless you are authorized partner by LinkedIn you have to do this way. See below notes.

Conclusion

In this blog, we learned how to Create a LinkedIn App, retrieve basic profile data from LinkedIn and share a post on LinkedIn with SSIS using ZS JSON Source Component and SSIS REST API Task in a very simple way. You can achieve many more functionalities with the use of both of these tools. Check our blogs/articles on REST API Task https://zappysys.com/blog/tag/ssis-rest-api-task/ and JSON Source Component https://zappysys.com/blog/tag/ssis-json-source/ to find out what these tools are capable of more.

References

Finally, you can use the following links for more information about the use of LinkedIn API with our tools:

• LinkedIn Documentation for API
• Lending Page for REST API Task, you can also find Tutorial Video here.
• Lending Page for JSON Source Component, you can also find Tutorial Video here.
• Help File: Documentation of SSIS REST API Task and JSON Source Component.

The post How to read LinkedIn data in SSIS – Call REST API / Load to SQL Server appeared first on ZappySys Blog.