Access Live Cvent 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 Cvent data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to Cvent in your Connect AI instance and access and update live Cvent data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Cvent, allowing you to easily access live Cvent 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 Cvent, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Cvent data.

Configure Cvent Connectivity for Excel

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

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

2. Select "Cvent" from the Add Connection panel

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

   Before you can authenticate to Cvent, you must create a workspace and an OAuth application.

   Creating a Workspace

   To create a workspace:

   1. Sign into Cvent and navigate to App Switcher (the blue button in the upper right corner of the page) >> Admin.
   2. In the Admin menu, navigate to Integrations >> REST API.
   3. A new tab launches for Developer Management. Click on Manage API Access in the new tab.
   4. Create a Workspace and name it. Select the scopes you would like your developers to have access to. Scopes control what data domains the developer can access.
      • Choose All to allow developers to choose any scope, and any future scopes added to the REST API.
      • Choose Custom to limit the scopes developers can choose for their OAuth apps to selected scopes. To access all tables exposed by the driver, you need to set the following scopes:

        event/attendees:read	event/attendees:write	event/contacts:read
        event/contacts:write	event/custom-fields:read	event/custom-fields:write
        event/events:read	event/events:write	event/sessions:delete
        event/sessions:read	event/sessions:write	event/speakers:delete
        event/speakers:read	event/speakers:write	budget/budget-items:read
        budget/budget-items:write	exhibitor/exhibitors:read	exhibitor/exhibitors:write
        survey/surveys:read	survey/surveys:write

   Creating an OAuth Application

   After you have set up a Workspace and invited them, developers can sign up and create a custom OAuth app. See the Creating a Custom OAuth Application section in the Help documentation for more information.

   Connecting to Cvent

   After creating an OAuth application, set the following connection properties to connect to Cvent:

   • InitiateOAuth: GETANDREFRESH. Used to automatically get and refresh the OAuthAccessToken.
   • OAuthClientId: The Client ID associated with the OAuth application. You can find this on the Applications page in the Cvent Developer Portal.
   • OAuthClientSecret: The Client secret associated with the OAuth application. You can find this on the Applications page in the Cvent Developer Portal.
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Cvent Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

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

Access Live Cvent Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Cvent 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. Cvent1), Table (e.g. Events), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Update Cvent Data from Excel

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

1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to Cvent (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 Cvent, and a notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Cvent Data from Cloud Applications

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



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