Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

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

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as JiraAssetsConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Jira Assets data, separated by semicolons.

  Jira Assets supports connecting and authenticating via the APIToken.

  To generate an API token:

  1. Log in to your Atlassian account.
  2. Navigate to Security < Create and manage API Token < Create API Token.

  Atlassian generates and then displays the API token.

  After you have generated the API token, set these parameters:

  • AuthScheme: APIToken.
  • User: The login of the authenticating user.
  • APIToken: The API token you just generated.

  You are now ready to connect and authenticate to Jira Assets.

• 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 Jira Assets data, such as Label.
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 Objects WHERE Label = '"&B4&"'","User="&B1&";APIToken="&B2&";Url="&B3&";Provider=JiraAssets",B5)
3. Change the filter to change the data.