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

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

Configure LDAP Connectivity for Excel

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

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

2. Select "LDAP" from the Add Connection panel

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

   To establish a connection, the following properties under the Authentication section must be provided:

   • Valid User and Password credentials (e.g., Domain\BobF or cn=Bob F,ou=Employees,dc=Domain).
   • Server information, including the IP or host name of the Server, as well as the Port.

   • BaseDN: This will limit the scope of LDAP searches to the height of the distinguished name provided.

     Note: Specifying a narrow BaseDN may greatly increase performance; for example, cn=users,dc=domain will only return results contained within cn=users and its children.

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

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to LDAP objects from Excel.

Access Live LDAP Objects in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live LDAP objects.

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. LDAP1), Table (e.g. User), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Update LDAP Objects from Excel

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

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

Live Access to LDAP Objects from Cloud Applications

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