Excel Spreadsheet Automation on Halo Service Desk Data with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Halo Service Desk provides formulas that can query Halo Service Desk data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Halo Service Desk 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 Halo Service Desk data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as APIConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Halo Service Desk data, separated by semicolons.

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

  HaloServiceDesk API Profile Settings

  HaloServiceDesk uses API key authentication. You can find or create API keys in HaloServiceDesk under Administration > Integrations > Halo API.

  Set the following connection properties to connect:

  • AuthScheme: Set this to APIKey.
  • APIKey: Set this to the API key from your HaloServiceDesk account.
  • Domain: Set this to the hostname of your HaloServiceDesk instance (e.g. yourcompany.haloservicedesk.com).
• 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 Halo Service Desk data, such as ClientId.
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 Assets WHERE ClientId = '"&B6&"'","Profile="&B1&";AuthScheme="&B2&";ProfileSettings="&B3&";Domain="&B4&";Provider=API",B7)


3. Change the filter to change the data.