Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula



Pull data, automate spreadsheets, and more with the QUERY formula.

The CData Excel Add-In for Okta provides formulas that can query Okta data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Okta 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 Okta data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.
  • Connection: Either the connection name, such as OktaConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Okta data, separated by semicolons.

    To connect to Okta, set the Domain connection string property to your Okta domain.

    You will use OAuth to authenticate with Okta, so you need to create a custom OAuth application.

    Creating a Custom OAuth Application

    From your Okta account:

    1. Sign in to your Okta developer edition organization with your administrator account.
    2. In the Admin Console, go to Applications > Applications.
    3. Click Create App Integration.
    4. For the Sign-in method, select OIDC - OpenID Connect.
    5. For Application type, choose Web Application.
    6. Enter a name for your custom application.
    7. Set the Grant Type to Authorization Code. If you want the token to be automatically refreshed, also check Refresh Token.
    8. Set the callback URL:
      • For desktop applications and headless machines, use http://localhost:33333 or another port number of your choice. The URI you set here becomes the CallbackURL property.
      • For web applications, set the callback URL to a trusted redirect URL. This URL is the web location the user returns to with the token that verifies that your application has been granted access.
    9. In the Assignments section, either select Limit access to selected groups and add a group, or skip group assignment for now.
    10. Save the OAuth application.
    11. The application's Client Id and Client Secret are displayed on the application's General tab. Record these for future use. You will use the Client Id to set the OAuthClientId and the Client Secret to set the OAuthClientSecret.
    12. Check the Assignments tab to confirm that all users who must access the application are assigned to the application.
    13. On the Okta API Scopes tab, select the scopes you wish to grant to the OAuth application. These scopes determine the data that the app has permission to read, so a scope for a particular view must be granted for the driver to have permission to query that view. To confirm the scopes required for each view, see the view-specific pages in Data Model < Views in the 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 Okta data, such as Status.
  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.
  3. =CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Users WHERE Status = '"&B2&"'","Domain="&B1&";Provider=Okta",B3)
  4. Change the filter to change the data.

Ready to get started?

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The Okta Excel Add-In is a powerful tool that allows you to connect with live Okta data, directly from Microsoft Excel.

Use Excel to read, write, and update Okta 0, etc. Perfect for mass imports / exports / updates, data cleansing & de-duplication, Excel based data analysis, and more!