Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Freshdesk Data with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as FreshDeskConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Freshdesk data, separated by semicolons.

  FreshDesk makes use of basic authentication. To connect to data, set the following connection properties:

  • Domain: Set this to the domain associated with your FreshDesk account. For example, in your URL: https://my_domain.freshdesk.com.
  • APIKey: Set this to the API key associated with your FreshDesk account. To retrieve your API key, Log into your support Portal -> Click on profile picture in the top right corner -> profile settings page. The API key will be available below the change password section to the right.
• 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 Freshdesk data, such as Status.
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 Tickets WHERE Status = '"&B3&"'","Domain="&B1&";APIKey="&B2&";Provider=FreshDesk",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.)