Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Factorial Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Factorial provides formulas that can query Factorial data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Factorial 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 Factorial data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Factorial data, separated by semicolons.

  Authentication

  Factorial uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication to connect to your HR data or to allow other users to connect to their data.

  Using OAuth Authentication

  To connect using OAuth, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to your Factorial admin panel and create a new OAuth application.
  2. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret from your application configuration.
  3. Configure the following connection properties:

  After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
  • OAuthClientId: Set this to your OAuth Client ID.
  • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to your OAuth Client Secret.
  • Scope: Set this to specify the data access permissions (default: "read write").
• 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 Factorial data, such as ProcessId.
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 Agreements WHERE ProcessId = '"&B6&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";OAuthClientId="&B3&";OAuthClientSecret="&B4&";CallbackUrl="&B5&";Provider=API",B7)

👁 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.)