How to Create a new datasource

Overview

If you are following along with a practice test datasource, make sure that you have selected ‘Playground’ customer from the list. If you are creating a new datasource for your customer, check to make sure that you have chosen that customer from the list. If you do not have access to the correct customers, please contact the account owner or submit a ticket to Alli Service Desk.

Instructions

1. First, find your customer from the dropdown at the very top of the main navigation. For this tutorial, our customer will be Playground. 

2. Click on the Reports from the main navigation on the left. 

   

3. Click on the blue Add New Datasource button in the top right corner.

   

4. You will see a list of available partners to pull from. If you do not see your partner on this list, then you can choose to upload via email or SFTP.

   

5. Name your datasource using an underscore _ to separate words in the name. Any periods or other special characters will automatically default to an underscore. Spaces are not allowed in the datasource name. 

   

The name of your datasource is preceded by the name of your customer. In this example, you will see that [katie_test_data] is preceded by the ‘customer’ name [playground.] This means that the full name of your datasource would be [playground.katie_test_data] for future reference.

You also have the ability to add optional tags and an optional description. These are helpful in differentiating and searching for data sources within the same customer.

6. Once you have named your datasource, click Next. Now you will see the settings of your newly created datasource.

7. Open up Advanced Settings and check to make sure all fields look correct.

The Current Owner has the power to make changes to the datasource, including assigning a new owner. If you are not the owner of the table, you will not be able to change these fields. 

Data Location is where the data source will live. If you have several data sources with all the exact same columns, you can select a different table in order to aggregate several tables together. 

Under New Uploads, you will see two choices: 

• Add and Update will be selected as the default which will add and update the existing data that is already in your table. 

• Replace which would get rid of all data, and replace it with the newest data.
  

If you are using any dimensions, you will continue with the default Add and Update so that the dimensions can correctly categorize your data.

8. Select Additional Configuration Needed. This will be determined by the type of datasource that you are using. Because we selected ‘email’ as the Datasource Type, you will see the email address where data needs to be emailed.

The data being emailed must be an attachment. If it’s a link inside of the email, it will not work out of the box (reach out to your account owner or in #alli-data for solutions).

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