Data Direct Integration

ServiceChannel enhances your ability to efficiently work with facilities management data through the integration with Data Direct. In this article, you will get the platform overview and learn how data is extracted. Here, you can also view the latest ServiceChannel Data Direct ERD.

Data Direct Overview

Data Direct is a data warehousing solution that allows you to get on-demand access to facilities management data. This advanced tool automatically links facilities data with other corporate data, such as real estate, sales, non-FM spend, or market research, expanding your ability to work with integrated information and analyze it. The Data Direct solution serves as a decision-support platform for enterprises that helps you to evaluate the impact of facilities on your business and vice versa.

The integration with the Data Direct platform empowers you to do the following:

  • Extract specific facilities management data
  • Merge R&M data from ServiceChannel with corporate data to populate company dashboards and analytics
  • Investigate the relationships between facilities management and other data
  • Correlate facilities management data with corporate sales information to understand store profitability relative to brand compliance, quality of service, and contractor performance
  • Import facilities management data into your corporate data warehouse allowing your in-house analytics team to perform proprietary analysis 
  • Create your own reports using the merged data

Contact your ServiceChannel representative for more information on the integration with Data Direct.

Diagram showing the flow of data from ServiceChannel to the customer via Data Direct

Extracting Data via Data Direct

Major data subject areas, such as work orders and related information, invoices, assets, proposals, locations, and more, are extracted from the main ServiceChannel database and saved in a flat file.

A flat file is a type of data storage that houses data in plain text without any structure. 

Data Direct flat file is a UTF-8 encoded text CSV file. The first line of the file contains column names delimited with a pipe character (|) followed by data rows, which are also delimited with a pipe character (|). 

Id|Date|HasCapacity|Category|Value|CreatedDate
37365|2021-05-04 07:47:32.740|True|XYZ Machine|75.0|2021-05-06 07:47:06.7400000 +00:00
183212|2021-06-04 07:12:06.740|False|ABC TRANSMISSION||2021-05-04 07:32:06.7400000 +00:00

The format of each data value is defined by its type. Explore the Data Direct Dictionary for more information. 

Data Direct flat files are shared on a private Azure Blob Container. You can process flat files once you have acquired access to the Container.

The Azure Blob Container is a fundamental element in Microsoft Azure's Blob storage service. Azure Blob storage allows the housing of large amounts of unstructured data. Blob Container helps to organize blobs, which are large binary objects, within the Azure Blob storage environment. 

ServiceChannel Data Direct ERD

This document contains the ServiceChannel Data Direct Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD). The ERD visualizes the major entities available in the ServiceChannel data sources and the interrelations between these entities.

See the latest ERD here.