Close provides an inside sales SaaS and CRM platform that bundles calling, SMS, and email in a single platform. Users can make and receive calls and take business notes without getting on a phone or leaving the application. The software provides a single automated sales workflow system.

When it was released in 2013, Amazon Redshift was the first cloud data warehouse. It uses defined schemas, columnar data storage, and massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture to provide a base for analytics reporting.

You can use Close's REST API to get data about contacts, leads, opportunities, and many more objects into your data warehouse. For example, to get a lead, you could GET /lead/{id}/.

Here's an example of the kind of response you might see when querying a lead.

{
    "status_id": "stat_1ZdiZqcSIkoGVnNOyxiEY58eTGQmFNG3LPlEVQ4V7Nk",
    "status_label": "Potential",
    "tasks": [],
    "display_name": "Wayne Enterprises (Sample Lead)",
    "addresses": [],
    "name": "Wayne Enterprises (Sample Lead)",
    "contacts": [
        {
            "name": "Bruce Wayne",
            "title": "The Dark Knight",
            "date_updated": "2019-01-06T20:53:01.954000+00:00",
            "phones": [
                {
                    "phone": "+16503334444",
                    "phone_formatted": "+1 650-333-4444",
                    "type": "office"
                }
            ],
            "created_by": null,
            "id": "cont_o0kP3Nqyq0wxr5DLWIEm8mVr6ZpI0AhonKLDG0V5Qjh",
            "organization_id": "orga_bwwWG475zqWiQGur0thQshwVXo8rIYecQHDWFanqhen",
            "date_created": "2019-01-01T00:54:51.331000+00:00",
            "emails": [
                {
                    "type": "office",
                    "email_lower": "thedarkknight@close.io",
                    "email": "thedarkknight@close.io"
                }
            ],
            "updated_by": "user_04EJPREurd0b3KDozVFqXSRbt2uBjw3QfeYa7ZaGTwI"
        }
    ],
    "custom.lcf_ORxgoOQ5YH1p7lDQzFJ88b4z0j7PLLTRaG66m8bmcKv": "Website contact form",
    "date_updated": "2019-01-06T20:53:01.977000+00:00",
    "html_url": "https://app.close.io/lead/lead_IIDHIStmFcFQZZP0BRe99V1MCoXWz2PGCm6EDmR9v2O/",
    "created_by": null,
    "organization_id": "orga_bwwWG475zqWiQGur0thQshwVXo8rIYecQHDWFanqhen",
    "url": null,
    "opportunities": [
        {
            "status_id": "stat_4ZdiZqcSIkoGVnNOyxiEY58eTGQmFNG3LPlEVQ4V7Nk",
            "status_label": "Active",
            "status_type": "active",
            "date_won": null,
            "confidence": 75,
            "user_id": "user_scOgjLAQD6aBSJYBVhIeNr6FJDp8iDTug8Mv6VqYoFn",
            "contact_id": null,
            "updated_by": null,
            "date_updated": "2019-01-01T00:54:51.337000+00:00",
            "value_period": "one_time",
            "created_by": null,
            "note": "Bruce needs new software for the Bat Cave.",
            "value": 50000,
            "value_formatted": "$500",
            "value_currency": "USD",
            "lead_name": "Wayne Enterprises (Sample Lead)",
            "organization_id": "orga_bwwWG475zqWiQGur0thQshwVXo8rIYecQHDWFanqhen",
            "date_created": "2019-01-01T00:54:51.337000+00:00",
            "user_name": "P F",
            "id": "oppo_8eB77gAdf8FMy6GsNHEy84f7uoeEWv55slvUjKQZpJt",
            "lead_id": "lead_IIDHIStmFcFQZZP0BRe99V1MCoXWz2PGCm6EDmR9v2O"
        },
        {
            "id": "oppo_klajsdflf8FMy6GsNHEy84f7uoeEWv55slvUjKQZpJt",
            "organization_id": "orga_bwwWG475zqWiQGur0thQshwVXo8rIYecQHDWFanqhen",
            "lead_id": "lead_IIDHIStmFcFQZZP0BRe99V1MCoXWz2PGCm6EDmR9v2O",
            "lead_name": "Wayne Enterprises (Sample Lead)",
            "status_id": "stat_4ZdiZqcSIkoGVnNOyxiEY58eTGQmFNG3LPlEVQ4V7Nk",
            "status_label": "Active",
            "status_type": "active",
            "value": 5000,
            "value_period": "monthly",
            "value_formatted": "$50 monthly",
            "value_currency": "USD",
            "date_won": null,
            "confidence": 75,
            "note": "Bat Cave monthly maintenance cost",
            "user_id": "user_scOgjLAQD6aBSJYBVhIeNr6FJDp8iDTug8Mv6VqYoFn",
            "user_name": "P F",
            "contact_id": null,
            "created_by": null,
            "updated_by": null,
            "date_created": "2019-01-01T00:54:51.337000+00:00",
            "date_updated": "2019-01-01T00:54:51.337000+00:00"
        }
    ],
    "updated_by": "user_04EJPREurd0b3KDozVFqXSRbt2uBjw3QfeYa7ZaGTwI",
    "date_created": "2019-01-01T00:54:51.333000+00:00",
    "id": "lead_IIDHIStmFcFQZZP0BRe99V1MCoXWz2PGCm6EDmR9v2O",
    "description": ""
}

Once you have identified all of the columns you will want to insert, you can use the CREATE TABLE statement in Redshift to create a table that can receive all of this data.

With a table built, it may seem like the easiest way to migrate your data (especially if there isn't much of it) is to build INSERT statements to add data to your Redshift table row by row. If you have any experience with SQL, this will be your gut reaction. But beware! Redshift isn't optimized for inserting data one row at a time. If you have a high volume of data to be inserted, you would be better off loading the data into Amazon S3 and then using the COPY command to load it into Redshift.

Now what? You've built a script that pulls data from Close and loads it into your data warehouse, but what happens tomorrow when you have new transactions?

The key is to build your script in such a way that it can identify incremental updates to your data. Thankfully, Close's API results include fields like date_created that allow you to identify records that are new since your last update (or since the newest record you've copied). Once you've take new data into account, you can set your script up as a cron job or continuous loop to keep pulling down new data as it appears.

Redshift is great, but sometimes you need to optimize for different things when you're choosing a data warehouse. Some folks choose to go with Google BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, or Microsoft Azure SQL Data Warehouse, which are RDBMSes that use similar SQL syntax, or Panoply, which works with Redshift instances. Others choose a data lake, like Amazon S3 or Delta Lake on Databricks. If you're interested in seeing the relevant steps for loading data into one of these platforms, check out To BigQuery, To Postgres, To Snowflake, To Panoply, To Azure Synapse Analytics, To S3, and To Delta Lake.