Connecting Bold BI to Facebook data source

Bold BI dashboard designer supports connecting Facebook web services through REST API.

Choose Facebook data source

To configure the Facebook data source, follow the below steps:

Click the Data Sources button in the configuration panel to add a new data connection.
Click CREATE NEW to launch a new connection from the connection panel.
Select the Facebook connection in the connection panel.

NOTE: You can also create a data source from the home page by clicking the Data Sources menu from left menu panel and Create Data Source from the data sources page.

Authentication with Facebook

Use the following steps to authenticate with Facebook web service:

Click the data source, you will be prompted with a login window. Enter the credentials of your Facebook account to authorize.
Click Allow in the authorization window to accept the scopes requested by Bold BI dashboards.

NOTE: If the permission is denied, the account will not be accessible from the dashboard.
Set a name to identify the account and click Next.
You have now successfully authorized your connection. Click Connect to continue with the data source connection.
To connect using existing connected account, refer Connected Accounts.

NOTE: To connect to another account click Connect New Account.

Connect to Facebook

Create Facebook data source

After successful authentication, the NEW DATA SOURCE configuration panel opens. Follow the below steps to create Facebook data source.

Enter a name and description (optional) for the data source.
Choose the radio button Insights or Graph API for selecting the required API Endpoints.
Click Insights radio button for choosing the Pages in your Facebook account and the Insights API Endpoints.
Click Graph API radio button for choosing the Pages in your Facebook account and the Graph API API Endpoints.
Enter a valid Facebook REST API endpoint in the URL textbox. Refer the Facebook API documentation for more details.
Click CUSTOMURL to enter the URL manually.
Select GET method for the REST API in Method combo box.
Choose a time interval for Refresh Settings using the combo box, to trigger the Rest API request periodically to keep the data in sync with our dashboard.
Select JSON data type in Data Format combo box.
The authentication type will be set to Facebook automatically since OAuth is used for authenticating with Facebook account.

You can also edit the connection information set here using the Edit Connection option.

Additional information

Refresh Settings

Period of time before next refresh call is triggered. This will automatically trigger a call for the API configured in the data source to keep the data up to date.

Setting up the URL

For instance, to query about the specific daily reach details, query the /ACCESS_TOKEN endpoint with required parameters as specified in Facebook Documentation.

Replace it in the URL to query a reach details details:

https://graph.facebook.com/v6.0/page-id/insights?metric=page_impressions_unique&period=day&access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>

For more information on the API endpoints available for this data source, refer to their official API Documentation

Sample queries

Feeds

https://graph.facebook.com/v6.0/page-id/feed?fields=from,id,title,unshimmed_url,likes.summary(true),privacy,message,created_time,picture,comments.summary(true)&access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>

Preview and data import

Click Preview & Connect to connect with the configurations set.
The Choose Schema(s) dialog opens. The schema represents the key fields of JSON data retrieved from Facebook Rest API request. This dialog displays a list of schemas in treeview and its corresponding values in grid for preview. Select required schema(s) from treeview to use in designer and click Connect.
Now, the data design view page with selected table schema opens. Drag and drop the table.
Click Save to save the data source with a relevant name.

Connected accounts for OAuth data sources

If you have already logged into the account and authenticated with web data source, the account information will be listed here. You can select one of the accounts or connect to a new account by clicking the Connect New Account button.