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Get the Report →Integrate Office 365 Data into Automated Tasks with Power Automate
Use CData Connect Cloud to connect to Office 365 data and integrate live Office 365 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 Cloud, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Office 365 data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Connect Cloud from Power Automate and integrate live Office 365 data into your workflows and tasks.
CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Office 365, allowing you to easily integrate with live Office 365 data in Power Automate — without replicating the data. CData Connect Cloud 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 Office 365, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Office 365 data.
Configure Office 365 Connectivity for Power Automate
Connectivity to Office 365 from Power Automate is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Office 365 data from Power Automate, we start by creating and configuring a Office 365 connection.
- Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
- Select "Office 365" from the Add Connection panel
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Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Office 365.
Office 365 uses the OAuth authentication standard. To authenticate requests, you will need to obtain the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and OAuthCallbackURL by registering an app with Office 365. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to using OAuth.
- Click Create & Test
- Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Office 365 Connection page and update the User-based permissions.
Add a Personal Access Token
If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.
- Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
- On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
- Give your PAT a name and click Create.
- 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, you are ready to connect to Office 365 data from Power Automate.
Connecting to CData Connect Cloud
To use Connect Cloud to integrate Office 365 data into your Power Automate tasks, you need a new SQL Server connection:
- Log in to Power Automate
- Click Data -> Connections -> New connection
- Select SQL Server
- In the connection wizard:
- Choose to connect directly
- Set SQL server name to tds.cdata.com
- Set SQL database name to the name of the Office 365 connection (e.g. Office3651)
- Set Username to a Connect Cloud user (e.g. [email protected])
- Set Password to the PAT for the above user
- Click Create
Integrating Office 365 Data into Power Automate Tasks
With the connection to Connect Cloud configured, you are ready to integrate live Office 365 data into your Power Automate tasks.
- Log in to Power Automate
- Click My flows -> New flow and choose to create the flow from blank or template
- Add (or configure) a SQL Server action (like Get rows) and configure the action to connect to your Connect Cloud connection
- Select a Table to work with (from the drop-down menu) and configure any advanced options (like filters, orders, etc)
- Configure any actions to follow and test, then save the flow
SQL Access to Office 365 Data from Cloud Applications
Now you have a direct connection to live Office 365 data from Power Automate tasks. You can create more connections and workflows to drive business — all without replicating Office 365 data.
To get SQL data access to 100+ SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect Cloud.
Related Power Automate Articles
This article walks through using CData Connect Cloud with Power Automate (Online). Check out our other articles for more ways to work with Power Automate Desktop: