Access Live Sage 300 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 Sage 300 data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to Sage 300 in your Connect AI instance and access live Sage 300 data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Sage 300, allowing you to easily access live Sage 300 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 Sage 300, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Sage 300 data.

Configure Sage 300 Connectivity for Excel

Connectivity to Sage 300 from Excel is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Sage 300 data from Excel, we start by creating and configuring a Sage 300 connection.

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

2. Select "Sage 300" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Sage 300.

   Sage 300 requires some initial setup in order to communicate over the Sage 300 Web API.

   • Set up the security groups for the Sage 300 user. Give the Sage 300 user access to the option under Security Groups (per each module required).
   • Edit both web.config files in the /Online/Web and /Online/WebApi folders; change the key AllowWebApiAccessForAdmin to true. Restart the webAPI app-pool for the settings to take.
   • Once the user access is configured, click https://server/Sage300WebApi/ to ensure access to the web API.

   Authenticate to Sage 300 using Basic authentication.

   Connect Using Basic Authentication

   You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to Sage 300. Note that the provider reuses the session opened by Sage 300 using cookies. This means that your credentials are used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from Sage 300 are used for authentication.

   • Url: Set this to the url of the server hosting Sage 300. Construct a URL for the Sage 300 Web API as follows: {protocol}://{host-application-path}/v{version}/{tenant}/ For example, http://localhost/Sage300WebApi/v1.0/-/.
   • User: Set this to the username of your account.
   • Password: Set this to the password of your account.
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Sage 300 Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Sage 300 data from Excel.

Access Live Sage 300 Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Sage 300 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. Sage3001), Table (e.g. OEInvoices), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Live Access to Sage 300 Data from Cloud Applications

Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Sage 300 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.