Access Live iContact 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 iContact data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to iContact in your Connect AI instance and access live iContact data in Excel spreadsheets.
CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for iContact, allowing you to easily access live iContact 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 iContact, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return iContact data.
This setup requires a CData Connect AI instance and the CData Connect AI Add-In for Excel. To get started, sign up a free trial of Connect AI and install the free Connect AI Excel Add-In.
Configure iContact Connectivity for Excel
Connectivity to iContact from Excel is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with iContact data from Excel, we start by creating and configuring a iContact connection.
- Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
- Select "iContact" from the Add Connection panel
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Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to iContact.
Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the iContact Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\IContact.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for iContact (see below).
iContact API Profile Settings
In your iContact account, navigate to Settings & Billing > Integrations and create a Custom API Integration. Your AppId, Username, Password, and AccountId are all available on the Getting Connected page of that integration.
- Click Save & Test
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Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add iContact Connection page and update the User-based permissions.
With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to iContact data from Excel.
Access Live iContact Data in Excel
The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live iContact data.
- Open Excel, create a new sheet (or open an existing one).
- Click Insert and click Get Add-ins. (if you have already installed the Add-In, jump to step 4).
- Search for CData Connect AI Add-In and install the Add-in.
- Click Data and open the CData Connect AI Add-In.
- In the Add-In panel, click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance
- In the CData Connect AI panel in Excel, click Import
- Choose a Connection (e.g. API1), Table (e.g. Campaigns), and Columns to import
- Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
- Click Execute to import the data
Live Access to iContact Data from Cloud Applications
Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live iContact 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.