Connectors → Zuora

About Zuora

Zuora is a technology solutions provider that offers complete Order-to-Revenue capabilities for modern businesses. Zuora is developing products to manage quotes, orders, billing, and revenue recognition for the entire customer lifecycle on a single platform. Zuora provides a subscription management SaaS platform for businesses utilizing a subscription-service model that enables any company in any industry to successfully launch, manage, and transform into a subscription business.

The Zuora Central platform lets companies keep track of subscription payments, billing, collections, pricing, product catalogs, and accounting. In addition to Zuora Central, Zuora's four primary SaaS applications are Zuora Billing, for recurring billing operations; Zuora Revenue, for revenue recognition; Zuora CPQ, sales quoting for subscription businesses; and Zuora Collect, for payment collections. Zuora's app marketplace, Zuora Connect, allows partners to develop and list apps built on the Zuora Central platform.

About the Zuora Connector

The Zuora connector supports the following Incorta specific functionality:

Feature	Supported
Chunking
Data Agent
Encryption at Ingest
Incremental Load	✔
Multi-Source
OAuth	✔
Performance Optimized	✔
Remote
Single-Source	✔
Spark Extraction
Webhook Callbacks	✔

Zuora connector authentication types

Incorta can connect to Zuora through four different types of authentication:

Header: uses the Zuora user name and password
Cookie: uses the Zuora user name and password
BasicHttp: uses the Zuora user name and password
OAuth: uses the Zuora user name and password, in addition to the Client ID and Client Secret for the OAuth client

For information about creating an OAuth client for a user account, refer to Manage Users - Create an OAuth Client for a User.

For information about creating an OAuth tenant login, refer to Create an OAuth Tenant Login in Zuora Connect.

Note

After successfully creating an OAuth client, Zuora displays the Client ID and Client Secret for the OAuth client. Make a note of these details when Zuora displays them. This is the only time you can see the Client Secret.

Steps to connect Zuora and Incorta

To connect Zuora and Incorta, here are the high level steps, tools, and procedures:

Create an external data source
Create a schema with the Schema Wizard
or, Create a schema with the Schema Designer
Load the schema
Explore the schema

Create an external data source

Here are the steps to create an external data source with the Zuora connector:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Data.
In the Action bar, select + New → Add Data Source.
In the Choose a Data Source dialog, in Application, select Zuora.
In the New Data Source dialog, specify the applicable connector properties.
To test, select Test Connection.
Select Ok to save your changes.

Zuora connector properties

Here are the properties for the Zuora connector:

Property	Control	Description
Data Source Name	text box	Enter the name of the data source
Authentication Type	drop down list	Select between Header, Cookie, BasicHttp, and OAuth
Username	text box	Enter the Zuora username
Password	text box	Enter the Zuora password
Client ID	text box	Select OAuth as the Authentication Type to configure this property. Enter the OAuth Client ID.
Client Secret	text box	Select OAuth as the Authentication Type to configure this property. Enter the OAuth Client Secret.
URL	drop down list	Select the URL you want to connect to. Select Other to enter a URL other than the available ones.
Other	text box	Select Other as URL to configure this property. Enter the URL you want to connect to.

Create a schema with the Schema Wizard

Here are the steps to create a Zuora schema with the Schema Wizard:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the Action bar, select + New → Schema Wizard.
In (1) Choose a Source, specify the following:
- For Enter a name, enter the schema name.
- For Select a Datasource, select the Zuora external data source.
- Optionally, enter a description.
In the Schema Wizard footer, select Next.
In (2) Manage Tables, in the Data Panel, first select the name of the Data Source, and then check the Select All checkbox.
In the Schema Wizard footer, select Next.
In (3) Finalize, in the Schema Wizard footer, select Create Schema.

Important

Joins are not automatically created between the schema tables. You need to define them manually. In addition, there are no key columns defined for schema tables. You need to edit each table and define the key column(s), if any. Key columns affect data loading, especially incremental loads.

Create a schema with the Schema Designer

Here are the steps to create a Zuora schema using the Schema Designer:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the Action bar, select + New → Create Schema.
In the Create Schema dialog, in Name, specify the schema name, and then select Save.
In Start adding tables to your schema, select Zuora.
In the Data Source dialog, specify the Zuora table data source properties.
Select Add.
In the Table Editor, in the Table Summary section, enter the table name.
To save your changes, in the Action bar, select Done.

Zuora table data source properties

For a schema table in Incorta, you can define the following Zuora-specific data source properties as follows:

Property	Control	Description
Type	drop down list	Default is Zuora Database
Data Source	drop down list	Select the Zuora external data source
Incremental	toggle	Enable the incremental load configuration for the schema table. See Supported Incremental Loads.
Query	text box	Enter the SQL query to retrieve data from the Zuora data source
Update Query	text box	Enable Incremental to configure this property. Define the SQL update query to use during an incremental load. The query and update query should be of the same structure, that is, the same selected columns.
Callback	toggle	Enable post extraction callback, that is, enable callback on the data source data set(s) by invoking a certain callback URL with parameters containing details about the load job.
Callback URL	text box	Enable Callback to configure this property. Specify the callback URL.

View the schema diagram with the Schema Diagram Viewer

Here are the steps to view the schema diagram using the Schema Diagram Viewer:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the list of schemas, select the Zuora schema.
In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Diagram.

Note

Only joins that you manually create appear on the diagram as there are no joins automatically created between the schema tables.

Load the schema

Here are the steps to perform a Full Load of the Zuora schema using the Schema Designer:

Sign in to the Incorta Direct Data Platform™.
In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the list of schemas, select the Zuora schema.
In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Load → Full Load.
To review the load status, in Last Load Status, select the date.

Explore the schema

With the full load of the Zuora schema complete, you can use the Analyzer to explore the schema, create your first insight, and save the insight to a new dashboard.

To open the Analyzer from the schema, follow these steps:

In the Navigation bar, select Schema.
In the Schema Manager, in the List view, select the Zuora schema.
In the Schema Designer, in the Action bar, select Explore Data.

For more information about how to use the Analyzer to create insights, see Analyzer and Visualizations.

Additional Considerations

Supported Incremental Loads

You can enable Incremental Load for a Zuora table data source. Incremental load will depend on the Update Query in the table properties. Make sure you define a key column in the table before using the incremental load; otherwise, when you run an incremental load, both new and updated data will be added to the existing data resulting in duplicate rows.

In the Update Query, you can use a timestamp, date, numeric, or text field. Select the field(s) to use in the Update Query as appropriate to your needs.

Note

Changing the incremental load strategy requires a full load to ensure data integrity.

Incremental Load Example

In this example, the Account table contains a column of the type Timestamp to use to load the table incrementally. In this case, the name of the date column is UpdatedDate and its format is Timestamp.

Here are the data source property values for this example:

Incremental is enabled

Query contains SELECT * FROM Account

Update Query contains SELECT * FROM Account WHERE UpdatedDate > ?

Note

? is a variable in the update query that contains the last schema refresh date.
When running an update query for an incremental load, you are able to use the ? reference character. The ? character will be replaced with the last incremental reference to construct a valid query to the database. The ? reference character is not valid in a standard query.