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

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

Configure Shortcut Connectivity for Excel

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

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

2. Select "Shortcut" from the Add Connection panel

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

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Shortcut Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Shortcut.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Shortcut (see below).

   Shortcut API Profile Settings

   Log into your Shortcut account, navigate to Settings > API Tokens, and click Generate Token.

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

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

Access Live Shortcut Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Shortcut 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. API1), Table (e.g. Categories), and Columns to import
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit
9. Click Execute to import the data

Live Access to Shortcut Data from Cloud Applications

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