Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for SuiteCRM provides formulas that can edit, save, and delete SuiteCRM data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search SuiteCRM 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 SuiteCRM data records you want to retrieve or the modifications to be made, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as SuiteCRMConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to SuiteCRM data, separated by semicolons.

  The User and Password properties must be set to valid SuiteCRM user credentials. Additionally, specify the URL to the SuiteCRM application, for example http://suite.crm.com.

  Note that retrieving SuiteCRM metadata can be expensive. It is advised that you store the metadata locally as described in the Caching Metadata section of the data provider help documentation.

• 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 SuiteCRM data, such as Industry.
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 Accounts WHERE Industry = '"&B4&"'","URL="&B1&";User="&B2&";Password="&B3&";Provider=SuiteCRM",B5)
3. Change the filter to change the data.