Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Azure Active Directory provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete Azure Active Directory data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Azure Active Directory 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 Azure Active Directory data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as AzureADConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Azure Active Directory data, separated by semicolons.

  Azure Active Directory uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate using OAuth, you will need to create an app to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL connection properties. See the OAuth section in 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 Azure Active Directory data, such as isVerified.
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 Domains WHERE isVerified = '"&B4&"'","OAuthClientId="&B1&";OAuthClientSecret="&B2&";CallbackURL="&B3&";Provider=AzureAD",B5)
3. Change the filter to change the data.