Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Postmark Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Postmark provides formulas that can query Postmark data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Postmark 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 Postmark 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 Postmark data, separated by semicolons.

  Using API Key Authentication

  Postmark uses server API tokens to authenticate requests. Each Postmark server has its own API token, which controls access to messages, bounces, templates, and statistics associated with that server.

  To obtain your Server API Token, log in to your Postmark account and navigate to the server you want to connect to. Go to API Tokens under the server settings and copy the token labeled Server API token.

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

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to your Postmark Server API Token. This value is sent as the X-Postmark-Server-Token header on every request.

  Example connection string:

  Profile=C:\profiles\Postmark.apip;AuthScheme=APIKey;ProfileSettings="APIKey=your-server-api-token"
  

  Connecting to Postmark

  Once the authentication is configured, you can connect to Postmark and query data from any of the available tables such as OutboundMessages, Bounces, and Templates.

• 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 Postmark data, such as .
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 Bounces WHERE = '"&B5&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Provider=API",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.)