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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/salesforce-cloud-power-query.rst

⇱ Work with Live Salesforce Data in Power Query

Work with Live Salesforce Data in Power Query

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Salesforce data and work with live Salesforce data in Microsoft Power Query.

Power Query is a data transformation and data preparation engine. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Salesforce data from Power Query. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Query through Microsoft Excel and get live access to Salesforce data for transformation and preparation.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Salesforce, allowing you to easily integrate with live Salesforce data in Power Query — without replicating the data. CData Connect AI looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Query and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Salesforce, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Salesforce data.

About Salesforce Data Integration

Accessing and integrating live data from Salesforce has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:

  • Access to custom entities and fields means Salesforce users get access to all of Salesforce.
  • Create atomic and batch update operations.
  • Read, write, update, and delete their Salesforce data.
  • Leverage the latest Salesforce features and functionalities with support for SOAP API versions 30.0.
  • See improved performance based on SOQL support to push complex queries down to Salesforce servers.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to perform actions like creating, retrieving, aborting, and deleting jobs, uploading and downloading attachments and documents, and more.

Users frequently integrate Salesforce data with:

  • other ERPs, marketing automation, HCMs, and more.
  • preferred data tools like Power BI, Tableau, Looker, and more.
  • databases and data warehouses.

For more information on how CData solutions work with Salesforce, check out our Salesforce integration page.


Getting Started


Configure Salesforce Connectivity for Power Query

Connectivity to Salesforce from Power Query is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Salesforce data from Power Query, we start by creating and configuring a Salesforce connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Salesforce" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Salesforce uses OAuth to authenticate. Click "Sign in" to authenticate with Salesforce. 👁 Authenticating with OAuth (Salesforce is shown).
  4. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Salesforce Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
  4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Salesforce data from Power Query.

Working with Live Salesforce Data in Power Query

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to work with live Salesforce data in Power Query.

  1. In Microsoft Excel, open the Power Query Editor (from the Data ribbon, click Get Data -> Launch Power Query Editor) 👁 Opening the Power Query Editor
  2. Click New Source -> SQL Server 👁 Creating a new SQL Server Source
  3. In the SQL Server database modal:
    • Set Server to tds.cdata.com,14333
    • (Optional) Set Database to the name of the Salesforce connection (e.g. Salesforce1 )
    👁 Configuring the Server
  4. In the SQL Server credentials modal, select "Database" and
    • Set User to your Connect AI username (e.g. [email protected] )
    • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
    👁 Configuring the credentials
  5. Click Connect
  6. Select the table(s) you wish to work with in the Navigator and click "OK" 👁 Selecting the table(s) (Salesforce is shown)

At this point, you have live access to Salesforce data from Power Query for transformation and preparation.

👁 Working with data in Power Query (Salesforce is shown)

SQL Access to Salesforce Data

Now you have a direct connection to live Salesforce data from Microsoft Power Query. You can create more connections and transform and preparte your data to better drive business — all without replicating Salesforce data.

To get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.