Connecting Bold BI to Harvest data source

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

Choose Harvest data source

To configure the Harvest 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 Harvest 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.

Choose data source from server

Create Harvest data source

Once you click the data source, the NEW DATA SOURCE configuration panel opens. Follow the below steps to create Harvest data source.

Enter a name and description (optional) for the data source.
Enter a valid Harvest REST API endpoint in the URL textbox. Refer the Harvest API documentation for more details.

Example: https://<:your_sub_domain>.harvestapp.com/projects.json
Select GET method for the REST API in Method combo box.
In Max Rows, enter the maximum number of rows to be fetched from the harvest data source. This value is used to fetch the data from harvest data source via pagination.
Replace your Access Token and Account Id in the headers
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.
Choose one of the Authentication Type from the dropdown.
To connect based on the chosen Authentication, refer Supported Authentication Types based on version APIs.

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

Authentication for Harvest

v1 APIs - Basic Authentication (UserName & Password)

Authenticate your Harvest account like below for v1 APIs:

Replace <:your_sub_domain> with your domain name.
Set Authentication type as Basic http Authentication. Enter a valid UserName and Password.

v2 APIs - Personal Access Token Authentication

Authenticate your Harvest account in one of the below ways:

Personal Access Token in Headers

Use Headers for authenticating your account of v2 APIs as like below:
- Set your Personal Access Token as value for Authorization in Header.
- Set your Account ID for Harvest-Account-ID in Header.
- Set value for User-Agent in Header. Refer Examples for User-Agent Values.
Set Authentication type as None.

Personal Access Token in Query String

Use Headers for authenticating your account for v2 APIs as like below:
- Pass your access token and account ID in the query string as like below.
- Set value for User-Agent in Header. Refer Examples for User-Agent Values.
Examples: https://api.harvestapp.com/v2/users/me?access_token=<:access_token>&account_id=<:account_id>
Set Authentication type as None.

Examples of User Agent

Harvest requires to include User-Agent header in each request with below as values:

Name of your application
A link to your application or email address.

Examples: - User-Agent : JohnSmith (john@abc.com) - User-Agent : DemoApp (demo@abc.com)

NOTE: Refer Authentication for v1 APIs and v2 APIs.

How do I get Domain name for connecting Harvest data source?

Login to Harvest account.
Go to Settings. Copy the web address and replace it in URL instead of <:your_sub_domain>.harvestapp.com or fetch the domain name from the website URL.

How do I get Personal Access Token and Account ID for connecting Harvest data source?

Login to Harvest Developer page and create Personal Access Token.
Once Personal Access Token was created, you could see Access Token, Account ID and Account name.

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. If you do not want to sync your new data, choose ‘Never’.

Setting up the URL

For instance, to get the expense_category details, query the /expense_categories endpoint.
From the listed information, get the ID of the specific expense_category.

https://<:sub_domain_name>.harvestapp.com/v2/expense_categories/<:expense_category_id>

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

Sample queries

List of messages for an invoice

https://demo.harvestapp.com/v2/invoices/13150403/messages

List of Roles

https://demo.harvestapp.com/v2/roles

List of Tasks

https://demo.harvestapp.com/v2/tasks

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 Harvest 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.