Data Warehouse access is still in active Beta with a few select customers. It is not available to everyone yet but feel free to request access from our support team, where we'll assess your account and see if it is a good fit.
How our solution works
Our solution works by using Google BigQuery, which is a Data Warehouse platform from Google. The benefits of this solution are:
Your queries are handled by Google infrastructure
You can set up advanced permissions in GCP (Access to individuals, Google Groups, Service Accounts...etc)
You can see your data and query it inside of Big Query
You can use the BigQuery API to access the data in other applications
There are BigQuery Connectors for multiple Business Intelligence (BI) solutions (such as PowerBI, Looker, Looker Studio, Metabase...etc)
You can push the data into other Data warehouses (like Azure Synapse)
You can use advanced Data Tools that allow you to look back through data changes as well
...And probably many more!
Before Access
Before you have access you'll need:
A Google Cloud Platform Account
A Project in that Account
Either an Email or a Google Group that has access to the Project
We recommend a Google Group so that you can add more users to the Project when needed.
After Access
Once you have been granted access you will get a link of the form:
Now you should follow the steps below
If you haven't created a Dataset in your Project, you'll need to do so:
In BigQuery, click on the 3 dots in Project you want to add to and select "Create data set"
Give it any ID, but change it to "Region", and in the Region box, search for "London" (Which is also known as europe-west2)
Click Create
Expand the project we shared with you (beacon-bi-production)
Expand the Data set (which is called account_{YOUR_BEACON_ACCOUNT_ID}
For which Record Type, you'd like to be able to query, click on the 3 dots and select "Query"
You can then write a query to pull in all the fields (just use a * to do this), the specific fields, filter or combine Tables together.
Run your query to ensure it is working correctly
Click on the Save Button, and select "Save view"
Choose your own project, the dataset you created earlier and then select a name for the table (often just the name of the table/record type you are querying)
Click Save
You should now see it inside of your Project and run queries there if you wanted
If you're connecting to PowerBI Desktop, you can now go through the OAuth flow to see your data
Frequently Asked Questions
How does billing work?
At the moment, we have not decided how pricing will work but the only fees during the beta are the Google Cloud Platform Query fees for using Big Query.
When will this be available?
We have no timeline at this time
What are the limitations of the platform?
There are 2 big limitations:
Right now the data formats are not overly flattened (i.e. they can be objects).
Any changes to the Record Type in Beacon will not be reprocessed in the tables
We are working on both of them, but any feedback is appreciated!