Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Raisers Edge NXT Data with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as RaiserEdgeNXTConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Raisers Edge NXT data, separated by semicolons.

  Before establishing a connection, supply the SubscriptionKey, found in the Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT Profile.

  Authenticating to Raiser's Edge NXT

  Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT uses the OAuth authentication standard. You can connect to without setting any connection properties using the embedded OAuth credentials.

  Alternatively, you can authenticate by creating a custom app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties.

  See the Help documentation for an authentication guide.

• 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 Raisers Edge NXT data, such as Type.
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 Constituents WHERE Type = '"&B6&"'","SubscriptionKey="&B1&";OAuthClientId="&B2&";OAuthClientSecret="&B3&";CallbackURL="&B4&";InitiateOAuth="&B5&";Provider=RaiserEdgeNXT",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.)