Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Act CRM Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Act CRM provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Act CRM data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Act CRM data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following:

=CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the Act CRM data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as ActCRMConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Act CRM data, separated by semicolons.

  The and properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid Act! user credentials. In addition to the authentication values, see the following:

  • Connecting to Act! Premium

    In addition to the authentication values, the to Act! is also required; for example https://eup1-iis-04.eu.hosted.act.com/.

    Additionally, you must specify the you will connect to. This is found by going to the About Act! Premium menu of your account, at the top right of the page, in the ? menu. Use the Database Name in the window that appears.

  • Connecting to Act! Premium Cloud

    To connect to your Act! Premium Cloud account, you also need to specify the property. This property is found in the URL address of the Cloud account; for example https://eup1-iis-04.eu.hosted.act.com/ActCloudName/.

  Note that retrieving ActCRM metadata can be expensive. It is advised that you set the property to store the metadata locally.

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search Act CRM data, such as Subject.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.

=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Activities WHERE Subject = '"&B5&"'","URL="&B1&";User="&B2&";Password="&B3&";ActDatabase="&B4&";Provider=ActCRM",B6)

👁 Formula inputs used in this example. (Google Apps is shown.)

3. Change the filter to change the data. 👁 The outputs of the formula. (Google Apps is shown.)