Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Basecamp Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Basecamp provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Basecamp data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Basecamp 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 Basecamp data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as BasecampConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Basecamp data, separated by semicolons.

  Basecamp uses basic or OAuth 2.0 authentication. To use basic authentication you will need the user and password that you use for logging in to Basecamp. To authenticate to Basecamp via OAuth 2.0, obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties by registering an app with Basecamp.

  See the Getting Started section in the help documentation for a connection guide.

  Additionally, specify the AccountId connection property. This can be copied from the URL after you log in.

• 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 Basecamp data, such as Drafts.
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 Projects WHERE Drafts = '"&B3&"'","User="&B1&";Password="&B2&";Provider=Basecamp",B4)

👁 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.)