Creating an OWOX BI Project and Onboarding with Workspace

OWOX BI Projects: How to Create and Get a Trial

Go to bi.owox.com and sign in with your Google account. The new OWOX BI project will be created automatically. You will receive a 7-day trial period with access to all core OWOX BI features.

The main component of the OWOX BI Platform is a Project, which consolidates and stores all your work. You can add colleagues to your project to collaborate on data collection and transformation.

To get started with OWOX BI, go to bi.owox.com and sign in using your Google account. It will be easier if you use a Google account that already has access to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and the necessary BigQuery roles (at minimum, "BigQuery Data Editor" and "BigQuery User". How to set up GCP).

For new users, an OWOX BI Project is automatically created after first sign-in at bi.owox.com.

After signing in, you'll be taken to the Welcome page, where you can provide some information about yourself and select your goal with OWOX BI.

In the final step, choose a pre-built solution based on your needs and goals. Click the ‘Apply and start trial’ button.

Your first OWOX BI project comes with a 7-day trial period, giving you access to all OWOX BI products and features, such as Pipelines, Streaming, Transformations, and BigQuery Reports (Google Sheets extension). When the trial ends, the project will automatically switch to the Free plan.

Users can create multiple OWOX BI projects without limit on the number of projects.

However, the trial period is only available for the first project per user; all subsequent projects are automatically created on the Free plan. You can easily change the billing plan on the Project settings page.

 

Workspace: Onboarding Steps and Managing Your Data Flow

Each user who already has at least one OWOX BI Project lands on the Workspace page. This is the central interface of your OWOX BI Project, where you can start creating Pipelines, Streaming, and Transformations.

Onboarding steps

Here's a simple guide to help you get started.

Step 1: Create a new Pipeline to import Ad cost data

• Click the "+ New pipeline" button to start building your data pipeline.
• Define the data sources you want to collect and integrate into your project. You can find more instructions here.
• Configure the pipeline settings according to your requirements. You will see your pipelines on the Workspace page once your pipelines are created. And now you are ready to proceed to the Streaming setup.

Step 2: Set up Streaming to collect user behavior data

• Click the "+ New" button and choose the 'Streaming' list item.
• Choose Streaming type: GA4 event-based web streaming or iOS/Android app streaming. You can find more instructions here.
• Specify the streaming settings. And now you are ready to proceed to the Transformation setup.

Step 3: Add Transformations to prepare analytics-ready data for your reports

• After configuring your Pipelines and Streaming, go to the Workspace page and click the "+ New" button, choose the 'Transformation' list item.
• Choose any templates that meet your requirements. For instance:
  • Blended AdSpend – you’ll get all cost data in an automatically updated, unified, and user-friendly table without unnecessary fields
  • Merge Events into Sessions – you’ll get a session table, generated on your GA4 events data table.
  • Standard Attribution Models – you’ll get one or several tables with the most popular attribution models.
  • You can find the full list of available templates here. You can also create a new transformation from scratch and develop your own SQL code to transform your data. You can read more about this in this article.
• Utilize the available tools and functions to tailor the data to your specific needs. Apply various data transformations to clean, enrich, or modify your data.
• Set up triggers for auto-run your transformation data flow.

Result: Once you have completed the onboarding steps, on the Workspace page, you can manage all created Fully-managed pipelines, Streamings, and Transformations.

The Workspace has two view options: List and Diagram. The List view opens by default. Your Workspace might look like this in the List view:

And here is a Diagram view example:

 

List view

In the List view, you'll find three sections: Pipelines, Streaming, and Transformations. Each section contains a table that displays detailed information in columns.

List of created Pipelines

The list of Pipelines contains:

• Pipeline Title;
• Source;
• Destination;
• Last activity;
• Status.

 

List of created Streamings

The list of Streamings contains:

• Streaming Title;
• Source;
• Destination;
• Last activity;
• Status.

 

List of created Transformations

The list of Transformations contains:

• Transformation Title;
• Last run type;
• Last run time;
• Last run status.

By clicking on any row in the list, you can effortlessly access the dedicated details page for the selected Pipeline, Streaming, or Transformation configuration. This streamlined workflow allows for effective troubleshooting, optimization, and management.

 

Diagram view

The Diagram view presents an automatically generated diagram that visualizes the interactive data flow. This provides a comprehensive project overview, allowing you to easily identify and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

Data flow on the diagram is represented using nodes. There are two types of nodes: OWOX BI products nodes (Pipeline, Streaming, Transformation) and External services & Data storage nodes.

 

OWOX BI product nodes examples

• Nodes with the Pipeline title and status.
  
• Nodes with the Streaming title and status.
  
• Nodes with the Transformation title and status.
  

 

External services & Data storage nodes examples

• Nodes with an advertising service icon and its name. The number of nodes depends on the list of configured Fully-managed pipelines.
  
• Nodes with a Google Analytics icon and a Web Property name, where costs are imported;
  
• Nodes with a Google BigQuery icon and the project's and dataset's names.
  
• Nodes with the Web Property name specified in the hit streaming settings or event-based streaming settings.
  

 

How nodes are displayed on the diagram

Once you make a Pipeline, Streaming, or Transformation in your OWOX BI project, it will be automatically put on the diagram as a node. Each node has a source on the left and a destination on the right. These sources and destinations are shown as External services or Data storage nodes.

Let's see some examples below:

• Cost data import from Ads services to Google Analytics Universal.
  
• Cost data import from BigQuery table to Google Analytics 4 via SFTP-server managed by OWOX.
  
• Cost data import from Ads services to Google BigQuery.
  
• Blending all your cost data into one unified table by using 'Blended AdSpend' template.
  
• Hit-based or event-based website streaming to Google BigQuery.
  
• Data transformations for combining hits or events in a session by using the 'Merge Events into Sessions' template.
  
• Data transformations for attributing costs to the session level and 'Cross-device sessions' transformation.
  

 

Manage your Data processing

As we mentioned before, the diagram shows the sequential process of handling your data within the OWOX BI project. Based on our experience, this process consists of several consecutive stages called Transformations. Each Transformation can be triggered either by a schedule (specific time) or by dependency (immediately after the successful completion of the preceding stage).

Let's look at examples of how the relationships between nodes are displayed on the diagram for two different triggers specified for Transformations.

 

Example 1. Schedule: Multiple Transformations are triggered by time, and they can be connected in a data flow with identical Data storage node names in Source and Destination for the Transformations.

As you can see in the screenshot above, a BigQuery table is specified between the Transformation nodes. It serves as the Destination for the first Transformation and as the Source for the next Transformation. To avoid duplicating the same name, they are combined into a single Data storage node on the diagram.

 

Example 2. Dependencies: Multiple Transformations are triggered sequentially based on the Dependency trigger.

As you can see in the screenshot above, it doesn't matter which Source and Destination tables are specified for each Transformation. On the diagram, you will see a straight arrow from one Transformation to another, indicating its dependency on the first one.

This data flow organization option is convenient for you if you process data from the same BigQuery table in each Transformation.

 

Diagram features

• You can scroll and zoom in/out of the diagram. To zoom the diagram canvas, hold the 'Ctrl' key and scroll the mouse wheel.
• You can open Pipelines, Streaming, and Transformations from the Diagram view by hovering over a node and clicking on the 'Open' button.
  
• You can highlight interconnected nodes upon clicking on one of the nodes. This lets you visually understand how your data is processed using OWOX BI products.
  
• Some 'Data storage' nodes may be repeated on the Workspace diagram to show you the actual and correct data flow. For example, Google BigQuery dataset with 'owoxbi_sessions_' tables.