Access Live Certinia Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet software application, primarily used for tasks related to data management, analysis, and visualization. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to Certinia data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to Certinia in your Connect AI instance and access and update live Certinia data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Certinia, allowing you to easily access live Certinia data in Excel for the web. Simply use the Connect AI Add-In to query live data (or write your own). Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported query operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Certinia, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Certinia data.

Configure Certinia Connectivity for Excel

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "Certinia" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Certinia.

   There are several authentication methods available for connecting to Certinia: login credentials, SSO, and OAuth.

   Authenticating with a Login and Token

   Set the User and Password to your login credentials. Additionally, set the SecurityToken. By default, the SecurityToken is required, but you can make it optional by allowing a range of trusted IP addresses.

   To disable the security token:

   1. Log in to Certinia and enter "Network Access" in the Quick Find box in the setup section.
   2. Add your IP address to the list of trusted IP addresses.

   To obtain the security token:

   1. Open the personal information page on certinia.com.
   2. Click the link to reset your security token. The token will be emailed to you.
   3. Specify the security token in the SecurityToken connection property or append it to the Password.

   Authenticating with OAuth

   If you do not have access to the user name and password or do not want to require them, use the OAuth user consent flow. See the OAuth section in the Help for an authentication guide.

   Connecting to Certinia Sandbox Accounts

   Set UseSandbox to true (false by default) to use a Certinia sandbox account. Ensure that you specify a sandbox user name in User.

   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Certinia Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Certinia data from Excel.

Access Live Certinia Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Certinia data.

1. Open Excel, create a new sheet (or open an existing one).
2. Click Insert and click Get Add-ins. (if you have already installed the Add-In, jump to step 4).
3. Search for CData Connect AI Add-In and install the Add-in.
4. Click Data and open the CData Connect AI Add-In.
5. In the Add-In panel, click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance
6. In the CData Connect AI panel in Excel, click Import
7. Choose a Connection (e.g. Certinia1), Table (e.g. Account), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Update Certinia Data from Excel

In addition to viewing Certinia data in Excel, CData Connect AI also lets you update and delete Certinia data. Begin by importing data (as described above).

1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to Certinia (your changes will be in red)
2. In the CData Connect AI Add-In panel, select Update
3. Optionally highlight the cell(s) you wish to update and select an update option ("Update All" or "Update Selected")
4. Click Execute to push the updates to Certinia, and a notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Certinia Data from Cloud Applications

Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Certinia data from your Excel workbook. You can add more data to your workbook for calculations, aggregations, collaboration, and more.



Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.