Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Salesforce Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Salesforce provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Salesforce data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Salesforce data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

Getting Started

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The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following:

=CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the Salesforce data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as SalesforceConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Salesforce data, separated by semicolons.

  There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Salesforce: OAuth, Login (or basic), and SSO. The Login method requires you to have the username, password, and security token of the user.

  OAuth Authentication (default)

  The default authentication mechanism (and the one preferred by Salesforce) is OAuth. To use OAuth with CData's embedded OAuth application, leave the connection properties blank. If you have configured your own custom OAuth application with Salesforce (see the Help documentation for more information), set OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL to the properties for you application. Set InitiateOAuth to the desired OAuth flow ("GETANDREFRESH" will have the connector manage the entire OAuth flow).

  Login (or Basic) Authentication

  If you do not wish do not wish to use OAuth authentication, you can use Login (or basic) authentication. Set AuthScheme to Basic, and set the User, Password, and SecurityToken properties. You can configure your security token in Salesforce.

  SSO (single sign-on) Authentication

  SSO (single sign-on) can be used by setting the SSOProperties, SSOLoginUrl, and SSOExchangeURL connection properties, which allow you to authenticate to an identity provider. See the "Getting Started" chapter in the Help documentation for more information.

  Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

  If your Salesforce org has MFA enforcement enabled, set MFACode to the time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) generated by your authenticator app (such as Salesforce Authenticator or Google Authenticator). MFACode applies to both OAuth and Login authentication flows.

• 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 Salesforce data, such as Name.
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 Account WHERE Name = '"&B3&"'","InitiateOAuth="&B1&";MFACode="&B2&";Provider=Salesforce",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.)