Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as SAPAribaProcurementConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to SAP Ariba Procurement data, separated by semicolons.

  In order to connect with SAP Ariba Procurement, set the following:

  • ANID: Your Ariba Network ID.
  • ANID: Specify which API you would like the provider to retrieve SAP Ariba data from. Select the Buyer or Supplier API based on your business role (possible values are PurchaseOrdersBuyerAPIV1 or PurchaseOrdersSupplierAPIV1).
  • Environment: Indicate whether you are connecting to a test or production environment (possible values are TEST or PRODUCTION).

  Authenticating with OAuth

  After setting connection properties, you need to configure OAuth connectivity to authenticate.

  • Set AuthScheme to OAuthClient.
  • Register an application with the service to obtain the APIKey, OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret.

    For more information on creating an OAuth application, refer to the Help documentation.

  Automatic OAuth

  After setting the following, you are ready to connect:

  APIKey: The Application key in your app settings. OAuthClientId: The OAuth Client Id in your app settings. OAuthClientSecret: The OAuth Secret in your app settings.

  When you connect, the provider automatically completes the OAuth process:

  1. The provider obtains an access token from SAP Ariba and uses it to request data.
  2. The provider refreshes the access token automatically when it expires.
  3. The OAuth values are saved in memory relative to the location specified in OAuthSettingsLocation.
• 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 SAP Ariba Procurement data, such as OrderStatus.
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 Orders WHERE OrderStatus = '"&B5&"'","ANID="&B1&";API="&B2&";APIKey="&B3&";AuthScheme="&B4&";Provider=SAPAribaProcurement",B6)
3. Change the filter to change the data.