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

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

Configure Grafana Connectivity for Excel

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

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

2. Select "Grafana" from the Add Connection panel

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

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Grafana Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Grafana.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Grafana (see below).

   Grafana API Profile Settings

   In Grafana, navigate to Administration > Users and Access > Service accounts, create a service account, then click Add service account token to generate a token.

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

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

Access Live Grafana Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Grafana 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. API1), Table (e.g. Alert), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Live Access to Grafana Data from Cloud Applications

Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Grafana 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.