Seedtrakr Analytics

What is Seedtrakr Analytics?

(NOTE:  The Analytics features requires an Enterprise subscription)

Seedtrakr Analytics gives our Enterprise subscribers direct access to their data using traditional reporting tools such as Microsoft Excel, PowerBI, Tableau and Google’s Looker Data Studio.  Users who are familiar with creating database reports using these, or similar, tools will be able to create their own reports and distribute them as needed.  

Please note that we recommend that Seedtrakr Analytics access be limited to those with experience creating database reports using SQL queries.

Seedtrakr uses a highly scalable cloud-native database to maintain performance during heavy usage and to securely isolate per-company data.  This next-generation database does not support direct access from traditional reporting/BI tools.

To address this, and to facilitate custom report creation for our Enterprise subscribers, we have implemented a process to automatically take a snapshot of operational data from our ‘transactional’ database and make it available in a standard reporting database for custom queries, reports and dashboards.  Google BigQuery is a cloud-based data warehouse that supports access from traditional reporting/BI tools.  Seedtrakr data in BigQuery can be queried using standard SQL queries.

These daily snapshots (performed overnight) copy current data for the following entities in Seedtrakr:

• Products

• Inventory Lots

• Inventory Amounts

• Customers

• CRM (contact engagements)

• Bookings

• Pickups

• Invoices

• Scale tickets

• Totes

How does it work?

Users with access to Seedtrakr Analytics will be able to use their reporting tool of choice to connect directly to your data in Google BigQuery and develop reports.  How these reports are created and shared is up to the user.

Note that we recommend this feature only be used by users with experience creating database reports in tools such as Microsoft Excel, PowerBI, Tableau and Google’s Looker Data Studio.

How do I get started?

Just send us an email (support@seedtrakr.com) with the list of user email addresses for those on your team who will need to create reports.   Please note that these email addresses must be Google accounts, i.e. they are used to login to an existing Google service such as Gmail, Youtube, etc.

Access to Seedtrakr Analytics, per company, is managed separately from regular Seedtrakr logins.  Our support team will configure access on request, on a per user basis.  Note that only users who will be creating reports will need access.  

Once reports are created it is up to the user to share with others.

Connecting to BigQuery from Excel or PowerBI

Google provides an ODBC driver that must be installed and configured prior to creating reports.  The specific driver to install depends on your Excel configuration (Windows/Mac, 32-bit vs 64-bit).  Click here to download an ODBC driver.

More information from Google can be found here:  https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/bigquery/how-to-connect-bigquery-to-microsoft-excel-and-other-apps-with-our-new-odbc-driver

A detailed walk through of how to select and configure the ODBC driver can be found here:  https://medium.com/@mattgazzano/connect-to-bigquery-data-in-excel-with-odbc-no-code-required-6fc8f7969a91

Connecting to BigQuery from Tableau

Tableau provides a built-in connector for BigQuery.  

More information on how to connect Tableau to BigQuery can be found here:  https://help.tableau.com/current/pro/desktop/en-us/examples_googlebigquery.htm

Connecting to BigQuery from Looker Studio

Looker Studio is a no-cost reporting tool from Google that can easily connect to BigQuery and allow you to build and share reports.  For an overivew ov Looker Studio, please visit https://support.google.com/looker-studio/answer/6283323?hl=en

Details on how to connect to you Seedtrakr data in BigQuery from Looker Studio can be found here:  https://support.google.com/looker-studio/answer/6295968?hl=en&ref_topic=6295893&sjid=205752956904287919-NC#zippy=%2Cin-this-article