Today, at the Salesforce Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, we announced the preview of a new Salesforce connector for Microsoft Power Query for Excel. With this integration customers can now connect and work with data from their Salesforce accounts in Excel to build reports, visualize information and discover new insights. You will need to install the latest Power Query update.
You can watch the following video or continue reading this blog post for more details about this connector preview
After installing the latest version of Power Query and the Salesforce extension, users see two new sources in the From Other Sources ribbon menu. Like other data sources, Power Query connects on behalf of the user and only has access to the user’s data. The Salesforce API is used in a read-only manner, letting users access the data without making changes. The connection uses the Salesforce OAuth flow, and the user provides their Salesforce permissions to Power Query in order to connect.
Salesforce Objects connects directly to the underlying object tables. Selecting Salesforce Objects displays a full list of all objects to which the user has access. Users can choose one or more tables and import them into the workbook.
Salesforce Reports connects using the Reports API and lets users import reports built in Salesforce into Excel. This option lets users access data in a form similar to what they see in Salesforce, without having to connect to the underlying objects and rebuilding these views on top.
Once in Excel, users can combine their Salesforce data with other relevant data using the wide range of connectors available in Power Query.
Since this is a preview, the extension and feature set may change in the final released version. This extension is always tied to the latest version of Power Query, and may require users to update.
Feedback is always appreciated, so please don’t hesitate to send us a smile/frown through the Power Query feedback options.
just to clarify, which SF subscriptions are supported for this?
(I'm assuming that this uses the SF API, and thus only SF licenses which include the API access are supported, is this the case?)
Correct, this uses the SF REST APIs.
I have downloaded and begun playing with this. Exciting! When I pull in Opportunities and Accounts, can you describe how I can "join" these objects so I can see account names instead of account ids? Maybe this is described elsewhere and is not specific to the Salesforce extension, but this kind of joining will be important for me (and others) to make the Salesforce integration most useful. I appreciate your help!
So, if I have a private domain, when trying to connect, I can log in and the login box connects to Salesforce (basically an IE interface), but the connection via Power Query remains open and unable to connect. Suggestions?
I'm not getting the new Salesforce options in the drop down from Other Sources. I did the 32-bit upgrade and no go.
When importing from reports in Salesforce there seems to be a row limit of 2,000. I believe this is a limitation by Salesforce. Is there a workaround for this?
@Ashok - Power Query makes it really easy to join queries using the Merge function. More information is in our help documentation: support.office.com/.../Merge-queries-fd157620-5470-4c0f-b132-7ca2616d17f9
@John - great question. Unfortunately we're not able to connect to custom domains yet but we're working on supporting that in an upcoming release.
@Tony - did you install both the Power Query version and the Salesforce connector? You need to go through both installations (and accept both EULAs) before the connector is installed. Please ensure Excel is closed in both cases.
@Ezgi - the Salesforce Reports API does currently have a limit of 2000 rows. There is no way to pull in the additional rows through the Reports connector today, although you could recreate report view using Salesforce Objects if you know the composition of the report.
I'm not able see the Salesforce options in the drop down from Other Sources. I did install the 32-bit version.
I'm not able see the Salesforce options in the drop down from Other Sources. I have installed the 32-bit version.
installed the 64-bit version. Trying to connect to Custom domain (TEST sandbox). I can log in just fine via a web browser, but the Power Query connector indicates "Your login attempt has failed. The username or password may be incorrect, or your location or login time may be restricted. Please contact the administrator at your company for help." Is there limited support for custom domains at this time?
Thanks.
I successfully downloaded the add on and confirmed all the system requirements are met but there is not an option for "From Salesforce Objects" from the "From Other Sources" menu within the POWER QUERY tab. Is there something else I need to do to make this option visible?
How do you change the URL address to point to a sandbox environment?
I like others are very much interested in support for a custom domain and for sandbox environments (ie a url other than login.salesforce.com).
Have the connectors been removed from downloads.msft.com? Both 32 and 64 bit links aren't working for me :(
It looks like the Salesforce Connector has been removed - both links lead to "page not available."