Warehouses and Lakes
Engineering Analytics

How to load data from Pivotal Tracker to BigQuery

Learn how to use Airbyte to synchronize your Pivotal Tracker data into BigQuery within minutes.

TL;DR

This can be done by building a data pipeline manually, usually a Python script (you can leverage a tool as Apache Airflow for this). This process can take more than a full week of development. Or it can be done in minutes on Airbyte in three easy steps:

  1. set up Pivotal Tracker as a source connector (using Auth, or usually an API key)
  2. set up BigQuery as a destination connector
  3. define which data you want to transfer and how frequently

You can choose to self-host the pipeline using Airbyte Open Source or have it managed for you with Airbyte Cloud.

This tutorial’s purpose is to show you how.

What is Pivotal Tracker

Pivotal Tracker is a project management tool that helps teams collaborate and manage their work efficiently. It provides a simple and intuitive interface for creating and prioritizing tasks, tracking progress, and communicating with team members. With Pivotal Tracker, teams can easily plan and execute their projects, breaking them down into manageable chunks and assigning tasks to team members. The tool also provides real-time visibility into project status, allowing teams to quickly identify and address any issues that arise. Pivotal Tracker is designed to help teams work more effectively, delivering high-quality results on time and within budget.

What is BigQuery

BigQuery is an enterprise data warehouse that draws on the processing power of Google Cloud Storage to enable fast processing of SQL queries through massive datasets. BigQuery helps businesses select the most appropriate software provider to assemble their data, based on the platforms the business uses. Once a business’ data is acculumated, it is moved into BigQuery. The company controls access to the data, but BigQuery stores and processes it for greater speed and convenience.

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Prerequisites

  1. A Pivotal Tracker account to transfer your customer data automatically from.
  2. A BigQuery account.
  3. An active Airbyte Cloud account, or you can also choose to use Airbyte Open Source locally. You can follow the instructions to set up Airbyte on your system using docker-compose.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that consolidates and streamlines the process of extracting and loading data from multiple data sources to data warehouses. It offers pre-built connectors, including Pivotal Tracker and BigQuery, for seamless data migration.

When using Airbyte to move data from Pivotal Tracker to BigQuery, it extracts data from Pivotal Tracker using the source connector, converts it into a format BigQuery can ingest using the provided schema, and then loads it into BigQuery via the destination connector. This allows businesses to leverage their Pivotal Tracker data for advanced analytics and insights within BigQuery, simplifying the ETL process and saving significant time and resources.

Step 1: Set up Pivotal Tracker as a source connector

1. Go to the Airbyte website and sign up for an account.
2. Once you have signed up, log in to your account and click on the ""Sources"" tab.
3. Scroll down until you find the ""Pivotal Tracker"" source connector and click on it.
4. Click on the ""Create new connection"" button.
5. Enter your Pivotal Tracker API token in the appropriate field.
6. Enter the name of your Pivotal Tracker project in the appropriate field.
7. Choose the data you want to sync from Pivotal Tracker to Airbyte.
8. Click on the ""Test"" button to make sure the connection is working properly.
9. If the test is successful, click on the ""Save & Sync"" button to start syncing your Pivotal Tracker data to Airbyte.
10. You can now use Airbyte to analyze and visualize your Pivotal Tracker data.

Step 2: Set up BigQuery as a destination connector

1. First, navigate to the Airbyte dashboard and select the "Destinations" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.

2. Scroll down until you find the "BigQuery" destination connector and click on it.

3. Click the "Create Destination" button to begin setting up your BigQuery destination.

4. Enter your Google Cloud Platform project ID and service account credentials in the appropriate fields.

5. Next, select the dataset you want to use for your destination and enter the table prefix you want to use.

6. Choose the schema mapping for your data, which will determine how your data is organized in BigQuery.

7. Finally, review your settings and click the "Create Destination" button to complete the setup process.

8. Once your destination is created, you can begin configuring your source connectors to start syncing data to BigQuery.

9. To do this, navigate to the "Sources" tab on the left-hand side of the screen and select the source connector you want to use.

10. Follow the prompts to enter your source credentials and configure your sync settings.

11. When you reach the "Destination" step, select your BigQuery destination from the dropdown menu and choose the dataset and table prefix you want to use.

12. Review your settings and click the "Create Connection" button to start syncing data from your source to your BigQuery destination.

Step 3: Set up a connection to sync your Pivotal Tracker data to BigQuery

Once you've successfully connected Pivotal Tracker as a data source and BigQuery as a destination in Airbyte, you can set up a data pipeline between them with the following steps:

  1. Create a new connection: On the Airbyte dashboard, navigate to the 'Connections' tab and click the '+ New Connection' button.
  2. Choose your source: Select Pivotal Tracker from the dropdown list of your configured sources.
  3. Select your destination: Choose BigQuery from the dropdown list of your configured destinations.
  4. Configure your sync: Define the frequency of your data syncs based on your business needs. Airbyte allows both manual and automatic scheduling for your data refreshes.
  5. Select the data to sync: Choose the specific Pivotal Tracker objects you want to import data from towards BigQuery. You can sync all data or select specific tables and fields.
  6. Select the sync mode for your streams: Choose between full refreshes or incremental syncs (with deduplication if you want), and this for all streams or at the stream level. Incremental is only available for streams that have a primary cursor.
  7. Test your connection: Click the 'Test Connection' button to make sure that your setup works. If the connection test is successful, save your configuration.
  8. Start the sync: If the test passes, click 'Set Up Connection'. Airbyte will start moving data from Pivotal Tracker to BigQuery according to your settings.

Remember, Airbyte keeps your data in sync at the frequency you determine, ensuring your BigQuery data warehouse is always up-to-date with your Pivotal Tracker data.

Use Cases to transfer your Pivotal Tracker data to BigQuery

Integrating data from Pivotal Tracker to BigQuery provides several benefits. Here are a few use cases:

  1. Advanced Analytics: BigQuery’s powerful data processing capabilities enable you to perform complex queries and data analysis on your Pivotal Tracker data, extracting insights that wouldn't be possible within Pivotal Tracker alone.
  2. Data Consolidation: If you're using multiple other sources along with Pivotal Tracker, syncing to BigQuery allows you to centralize your data for a holistic view of your operations, and to set up a change data capture process so you never have any discrepancies in your data again.
  3. Historical Data Analysis: Pivotal Tracker has limits on historical data. Syncing data to BigQuery allows for long-term data retention and analysis of historical trends over time.
  4. Data Security and Compliance: BigQuery provides robust data security features. Syncing Pivotal Tracker data to BigQuery ensures your data is secured and allows for advanced data governance and compliance management.
  5. Scalability: BigQuery can handle large volumes of data without affecting performance, providing an ideal solution for growing businesses with expanding Pivotal Tracker data.
  6. Data Science and Machine Learning: By having Pivotal Tracker data in BigQuery, you can apply machine learning models to your data for predictive analytics, customer segmentation, and more.
  7. Reporting and Visualization: While Pivotal Tracker provides reporting tools, data visualization tools like Tableau, PowerBI, Looker (Google Data Studio) can connect to BigQuery, providing more advanced business intelligence options. If you have a Pivotal Tracker table that needs to be converted to a BigQuery table, Airbyte can do that automatically.

Wrapping Up

To summarize, this tutorial has shown you how to:

  1. Configure a Pivotal Tracker account as an Airbyte data source connector.
  2. Configure BigQuery as a data destination connector.
  3. Create an Airbyte data pipeline that will automatically be moving data directly from Pivotal Tracker to BigQuery after you set a schedule

With Airbyte, creating data pipelines take minutes, and the data integration possibilities are endless. Airbyte supports the largest catalog of API tools, databases, and files, among other sources. Airbyte's connectors are open-source, so you can add any custom objects to the connector, or even build a new connector from scratch without any local dev environment or any data engineer within 10 minutes with the no-code connector builder.

We look forward to seeing you make use of it! We invite you to join the conversation on our community Slack Channel, or sign up for our newsletter. You should also check out other Airbyte tutorials, and Airbyte’s content hub!

What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

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Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
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Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
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What should you do next?

Hope you enjoyed the reading. Here are the 3 ways we can help you in your data journey:

flag icon
Easily address your data movement needs with Airbyte Cloud
Take the first step towards extensible data movement infrastructure that will give a ton of time back to your data team. 
Get started with Airbyte for free
high five icon
Talk to a data infrastructure expert
Get a free consultation with an Airbyte expert to significantly improve your data movement infrastructure. 
Talk to sales
stars sparkling
Improve your data infrastructure knowledge
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter and get the community’s new enlightening content along with Airbyte’s progress in their mission to solve data integration once and for all.
Subscribe to newsletter

Frequently Asked Questions

What data can you extract from Pivotal Tracker?

Pivotal Tracker's API provides access to a wide range of data related to software development projects. The following are the categories of data that can be accessed through the API:

1. Projects: Information about the projects, including their names, descriptions, and IDs.

2. Stories: Details about the individual stories within a project, including their titles, descriptions, and statuses.

3. Epics: Information about the epics within a project, including their titles, descriptions, and statuses.

4. Tasks: Details about the tasks associated with a story, including their titles, descriptions, and statuses.

5. Comments: Information about the comments made on stories, epics, and tasks.

6. Memberships: Details about the members of a project, including their names, email addresses, and roles.

7. Labels: Information about the labels used to categorize stories within a project.

8. Iterations: Details about the iterations within a project, including their start and end dates.

9. Activity: Information about the activity within a project, including changes made to stories, epics, and tasks.

Overall, Pivotal Tracker's API provides a comprehensive set of data that can be used to track and manage software development projects.

What data can you transfer to BigQuery?

You can transfer a wide variety of data to BigQuery. This usually includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data like transaction records, log files, JSON data, CSV files, and more, allowing robust, scalable data integration and analysis.

What are top ETL tools to transfer data from Pivotal Tracker to BigQuery?

The most prominent ETL tools to transfer data from Pivotal Tracker to BigQuery include:

  • Airbyte
  • Fivetran
  • Stitch
  • Matillion
  • Talend Data Integration

These tools help in extracting data from Pivotal Tracker and various sources (APIs, databases, and more), transforming it efficiently, and loading it into BigQuery and other databases, data warehouses and data lakes, enhancing data management capabilities.