Connect to Outlook Data in DigitalSuite Studio through RunMyProcess DSEC

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use Arkobi Digital's low-code cloud native platform RunMyProcess's DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect (DSEC) to connect to Outlook.

The CData JDBC Driver for Outlook implements JDBC Standards and enables a applications ranging from BI to IDE to connect with Outlook. In this article, we describe how to connect to Outlook data from Arkobi Digital RunMyProcess's DSEC and connect to Outlook in RunMyProcess.

Setting up EnterpriseConnect Agent

Configure the EnterpriseConnect Agent following the EnterpriseConnect page in the RunMyProcess documentation.

Setting up JDBC Adapter

The JDBC Adapter section describes the steps to connect to RDBMS through JDBC. Follow the steps and open the JDBC.config file.

  1. Create a JSON entry for the CData JDBC Driver for Outlook, e.g.
    API = {
      "sqlDriver" : "...",
      "sqlSource" : "...",
      "sqlDriverPath" : "..."
    }
    
  2. Set the "sqlDriver" field to the Class name for the CData JDBC Driver, e.g.
    cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver
  3. Set the "sqlSource" field to a JDBC URL for connecting to Outlook, e.g.
    jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Outlook.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;TenantId=your_tenant_id;CallbackUrl=http://localhost:33333;

    Built-in Connection String Designer

    For assistance in constructing the JDBC URL, use the connection string designer built into the Outlook JDBC Driver. Either double-click the JAR file or execute the jar file from the command-line.

    java -jar cdata.jdbc.api.jar
    

    Fill in the connection properties and copy the connection string to the clipboard.

    Using OAuth Authentication

    Microsoft Graph API uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication. You must register an application in the Microsoft Azure Portal to obtain OAuth credentials (Client ID and Client Secret).

    Obtaining OAuth Credentials

    1. Log in to the Azure Portal.
    2. Navigate to Azure Active Directory > App registrations.
    3. Click New registration to create a new application.
    4. Enter an application name and select the appropriate account types.
    5. Set the Redirect URI to your application's callback URL (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).
    6. Click Register to create the application.
    7. On the application overview page, copy the Application (client) ID - this is your OAuthClientId.
    8. Navigate to Certificates & secrets and create a new client secret.
    9. Copy the client secret value - this is your OAuthClientSecret.
    10. Navigate to API permissions and add the required Microsoft Graph API permissions:
      • Mail.Read - For accessing email messages
      • Contacts.Read - For accessing contacts
      • Calendars.Read - For accessing calendar events
      • Tasks.Read - For accessing To Do tasks
      • offline_access - For obtaining refresh tokens
    11. Click Grant admin consent to grant these permissions.

    Connecting with OAuth

    After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

    • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
    • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. The CData API Profile for Outlook will automatically walk through the OAuth process in order to obtain the access token.
    • OAuthClientId: Set this to the Application (client) ID from Azure Portal.
    • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret value from Azure Portal.
    • TenantId: Set this to your Azure AD tenant identifier (GUID or domain name like 'contoso.onmicrosoft.com').
    • CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app registration (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).

    Example connection string

    Profile=C:\profiles\Outlook.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;TenantId=your_tenant_id;CallbackUrl=http://localhost:33333;
    
  4. Set the "sqlDriverPath" field to the name of the CData JDBC Driver JAR file, e.g.
    cdata.jdbc.api.jar

Sample JDBC.config File

#DBAgent Configuration
API = {"sqlDriver" : "cdata.jdbc.api.APIDriver", "sqlSource" = "jdbc:api:Profile=C:\profiles\Outlook.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;TenantId=your_tenant_id;CallbackUrl=http://localhost:33333;","sqlDriverPath" = "cdata.jdbc.api.jar" }

Put the JDBC driver JAR file (cdata.jdbc.api.jar) into the same directory as unified-adapter-[version].jar.

Note: Make sure to put the CData license file (cdata.jdbc.api.lic) into the same directory. Since the license is generated based on the unique identifier of the machine where the product in installed, you will need an offline activation if you want to put the file on another machine.

Starting DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect Agent

In Windows, start RunMyProcess DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect Agent in Windows services. To start the application through command line, see Starting the EnterpriseConnect Agent in the RunMyProcess documents.

Starting the JDBC Adapter

Start the JDBC Adapter from runAdapter.bat. Once the Adapter is running, you can access the application through the agent address (e.g. 127.0.0.1:8080). Below is an example executing the command in Windows.

... > java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=./log.properties -cp lib/* org.runmyprocess.sec2.AdapterHandler :
2021-06-09 14:37:58|INFO|correlationId=|Searching for config file...
2021-06-09 14:37:58|INFO|correlationId=|Adapter Handler started with [JDBC] configuration
2021-06-09 14:37:59|INFO|correlationId=|agent address: 127.0.0.1:8080
2021-06-09 14:38:00.251:INFO::ConnectionThread: Logging initialized @1820ms to org.eclipse.jetty.util.log.StdErrLog
2021-06-09 14:38:00|INFO|correlationId=|onConnect() websocket connection between Agent and Adapter established

Once the DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect Agent and JDBC Adapter are running, access http://localhost:(specified-port-number)/ through your browser to open the page shown below.

Check the availability of the JDBC Adapter using tools such as Postman or cURL. Here, we use Postman to send the HTTP POST request.

Configure the RequestHeader as follows:

Content-Type application/json

Configure the RequestBody as follows:

{
	"protocol":"JDBC",
	"data":{
		"DBType":"API",
		"sqlUsername":"",
		"sqlPassword":"",
		"sqlStatement":"SELECT * FROM CalendarGroupCalendars"
	}
}

If the JDBC.config file contains credential information, sqlUsername and sqlPassword can be left empty. If you are not sure of the table name, you can retrieve the list of tables using the request SELECT * FROM sys_tables

The request is successful if the Status is 200 and the Body contains Outlook data in JSON format.

Connect to Outlook through DSEC Agent in DigitalSuite Studio

Create a DigitalSuite Studio project and then create a Provider in the project.

  • URL: The URL for accessing JDBC Agent (e.g. http:localhost:8080/)
  • Authentication Scheme: Login/password
  • Login: The value from agent.user in the application.properties file
  • Password: agent.password in the application.properties file
  • Secured: Checked
  • Use DigitalSuite EnterpriseConnect: Checked
  • With domain: The value from agent.domain in application.properties file

Next, create a Connector in the Provider.

  • Connector URL: Leave this empty
  • Architecture: REST/XML-RPC
  • Method: POST
  • Result format: JSON
  • Accept media type: application/json
  • Character set: Automatic
  • Content: Same as the Request body used in the JDBC Adapter
  • Content type: application/json

The JSON data we used as the Request body in JDBC Adapter:

{
	"protocol":"JDBC",
	"data":{
		"DBType":"API",
		"sqlUsername":"",
		"sqlPassword":"",
		"sqlStatement":"SELECT * FROM CalendarGroupCalendars"
	}
}

Open Launch Test to perform the test. The test is successful if Outlook data is shown in Result on the right pane.

Now you can use Outlook data in RunMyProcess DigitalSuite Studio through DSEC.

For the detailed information on supported SQL commands, refer to the SQL Compliance section in our help documentation. For information on tables, refer to the Data Model section.

Ready to get started?

Connect to live data from Outlook with the API Driver

Connect to Outlook