Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as epicorKineticConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Epicor Kinetic data, separated by semicolons.

  To successfully connect to your ERP instance, you must specify the following connection properties:

  • Url:the URL of the server hosting your ERP instance. For example, https://myserver.EpicorSaaS.com
  • ERPInstance: the name of your ERP instance.
  • User: the username of your account.
  • Password: the password of your account.
  • Service: the service you want to retrieve data from. For example, BaqSvc.

  In addition, you may also set the optional connection properties:

  • ApiKey: An optional key that may be required for connection to some services depending on your account configuration.
  • ApiVersion: Defaults to v1. May be set to v2 to use the newer Epicor API.
  • Company: Required if you set the ApiVersion to v2.
• 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 Epicor Kinetic data, such as CompanyName.
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 Customers WHERE CompanyName = '"&B6&"'","Service="&B1&";ERPInstance="&B2&";URL="&B3&";User="&B4&";Password="&B5&";Provider=epicorKinetic",B7)
3. Change the filter to change the data.