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URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/sharepoint-cloud-power-automate.rst

⇱ Integrate SharePoint Data into Automated Tasks with Power Automate

Integrate SharePoint Data into Automated Tasks with Power Automate

👁 Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to SharePoint data and integrate live SharePoint data into your Power Automate tasks.

Microsoft Power Automate is an online service that automates events (known as workflows) across the most common apps and services. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to SharePoint data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Automate and integrate live SharePoint data into your workflows and tasks.

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

About SharePoint Data Integration

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

  • Access data from a wide range of SharePoint versions, including Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and above, and SharePoint Online.
  • Access all of SharePoint thanks to support for Hidden and Lookup columns.
  • Recursively scan folders to create a relational model of all SharePoint data.
  • Use SQL stored procedures to upload and download documents and attachments.

Most customers rely on CData solutions to integrate SharePoint data into their database or data warehouse, while others integrate their SharePoint data with preferred data tools, like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel.

For more information on how customers are solving problems with CData's SharePoint solutions, refer to our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.


Getting Started


Configure SharePoint Connectivity for Power Automate

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. 👁 Adding a Connection
  2. Select "SharePoint" from the Add Connection panel
    3. 👁 Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to SharePoint.

    Set the URL property to the base SharePoint site or to a sub-site. This allows you to query any lists and other SharePoint entities defined for the site or sub-site.

    The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SharePoint user credentials when using SharePoint On-Premise.

    If you are connecting to SharePoint Online, set the SharePointEdition to SHAREPOINTONLINE along with the User and Password connection string properties. For more details on connecting to SharePoint Online, see the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation

    👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add SharePoint 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 SharePoint data from Power Automate.

Connecting to CData Connect AI

To use Connect AI to integrate SharePoint data into your Power Automate tasks, you need a new SQL Server connection:

  1. Log in to Power Automate
  2. Click Data -> Connections -> New connection
  3. Select SQL Server 👁 Creating a new SQL Server Connection
  4. In the connection wizard:

    • Choose to connect directly
    • Set SQL server name to tds.cdata.com,14333
    • Set SQL database name to the name of the SharePoint connection (e.g. SharePoint1)
    • Set Username to a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
    • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
    • Click Create 👁 Connecting to Connect AI

Integrating SharePoint Data into Power Automate Tasks

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to integrate live SharePoint data into your Power Automate tasks.

  1. Log in to Power Automate
  2. Click My flows -> New flow and choose to create the flow from blank or template
  3. Add (or configure) a SQL Server action (like Get rows) and configure the action to connect to your Connect AI connection
  4. Select a Table to work with (from the drop-down menu) and configure any advanced options (like filters, orders, etc) 👁 Getting SharePoint "Rows"
  5. Configure any actions to follow and test, then save the flow

SQL Access to SharePoint Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live SharePoint data from Power Automate tasks. You can create more connections and workflows to drive business — all without replicating SharePoint data.

To get SQL 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.

Related Power Automate Articles

This article explains how to use CData Connect AI with Power Automate (Online). Check out our other articles for more ways to work with Power Automate Desktop: