I am running an automated Data job on a windows server that outputs a SAS dataset everyday. On top of this, I have an Excel Report connected via Excel's Local Data Provider.
My problem is, that the Data Connection needs to be manually refreshed by a person with SAS installed on their PC. I have tried writing a piece of SAS code that opens the Excel file on the server and then triggers a piece of VBA that did the refreshing, before closing and saving. This works perfectly if I'm logged into the server. But it doesn't seem to work if nobody's signed in. I believe this has something to do with having an active user session.
UPDATE
The process that I use to connect to a local data source from Excel, looks like this:
Data Connection Wizard
Select SAS Local Data Provider from OLE DB Providers
Add the Route to my SAS Dataset as data source
Select My source table and create a Pivot Report
Is there any way to do something like this?
When you want to run Excel unattended, thus no interactive user is logged on, you can do this with a Windows service. You have to ensure some settings for Excel, as well as it is important how you start excel.
Be aware of Microsoft does not support, or even suggest you to do something like this. Excel is a client software, it is exactly the opposite of a piece of software that is easy to maintain running as as service. Read this excellent article Considerations for server-side Automation of Office about the topic. Even when a little old (talking about Office 2003) it is still state of the art.
Please consider these conditions:
You cannot use the System or Network account, you have to let the windows service running under an account that at least have excel started once. This cannot be done with the named ones (as they cannot be used as interactive users)
Excel has to be opened at least once with the user under with the windows service account will run. You'll have to configure dcom settings, open vba once to initialize it, and most probably set some settings like "trust vba model" to be able to programmatically access Excel
last but not least when starting Excel you have to start it with loading the user profile. The Process.Start method in c# allows exactly that by just setting a boolean value to true.
Doing it like this, Excel should just start fine and update data connection with the VBA.
You may want to implement that windows service in c#, as it is really easy, have a look: Creating a Basic Windows Service in C#.
When using c#, be aware of you have to correctly dispose interop objects, pretty good described in How to properly clean up Excel interop objects
Related
I am trying to create a data entry "app" to collect daily readings across our site. Here are the three biggest constraints:
Software - ideally, we would use some software within the Microsoft 365 Suite, mainly because those are the only approved apps on site. It may be possible to use open source software, but that might raise some flags in terms of security. So my thoughts are to use either Excel or Access.
Cost - ideally, we do not want purchase any additional software licenses. I would try and create something with Power Apps, but we do not have the licensing for an Azure or SQL server to store the data. I could be missing something here though.
Mobile-Friendly - finally, it needs to work on an Android tablet. Currently, we collect readings using pen and paper. The whole idea of this is to move towards using a tablet.
The easiest approach would be to create an Excel spreadsheet, save it on OneDrive, and edit the spreadsheet. I don't love this option because we are collecting 100's of data points each day. This would end up with a very wide spreadsheet that will be cumbersome to navigate.
The other option I looked into was creating an Access database and accompanying form and storing it on SharePoint. However, it seems Microsoft has stopped supporting Access databases on SharePoint.
I have created data entry forms using VBA, similar to this, but these do not work on mobile.
Is it possible to create a data entry form in Excel that also works on the Android version of Excel? Are there other alternatives I am not thinking of?
I am engaged in just this kind of project also. I have written an app in PowerApps, built an Excel spreadsheet and stored it in OneDrive, and am running it (the app) on an iPad. The design differs somewhat from your description of directly presenting a spreadsheet to the user (which I think PowerApps could do) because I don't want users having direct access to the data.
Edit: You do not need Azure or SQL, unless you are storing tons of data. Excel can be a satisfactory data storage location for modest uses.
I found the learning curve for PowerApps to be quite steep, as it's a different paradigm than line-by-line coding.
I think this is a more user friendly way to collect data than trying to run an Excel form, and once you get it made and polished, you'll look like a pro :)
I am by no means an expert but if you need some tips I'll do what I can to help. It sounds like we are at similar developmental stages.
Is it possible to create a data entry form in Excel that also works on the Android version of Excel? Are there other alternatives I am not thinking of?
Microsoft Forms does the job when created from OneDrive on mobile browser. Side note: the form I just created and the response I submitted have now disappeared from my OneDrive.
I also saw some people using Power Automate to save responses from a form into an Excel file (every reponse).
I've been for the past few days trying to automate Siebel Web with Excel VBA.
With a combination of sendkeys and some webscraping, I've managed to query my data. The thing is that now I can't call the export applet in order to save it. I've searched almost every site that contains the tags "Siebel", "javascript", with no luck. Since IE developer tools are locked, I've used VBA to scrape the webpage, and tried to use Fiddler, again, with no luck.
I was wondering if someone managed to export data from Siebel into a xml/csv/excel file through automation.
I'll post my code later, in order to see if you could help me.
It seems to me that you would be better off using one of the Siebel API's for Java or COM. The COM interface allows you to directly integrate with Siebel using Excel VBA. It is a commonly used interface for extracting and updating business data.
It allows full access to the business layer, which includes the data sources, but also the process objects like Work Flows, Business Scripts, and other application functionality. It is truly powerful when you start working with it.
Keep in mind that you do need to be able to access the object manager port (2321) from the machine that the Excel file is running. In many corporate environment this is not allowed. So verify that you can beforehand.
I want to link an excel file to SQL Server 2014 whereby I can edit the file and the data gets updated on the server automatically.
Similar to what happens when you link sql server to Access whereas you can edit the data and the changes take effect in the server.
Thanks in advance
There is no out of the box solution for this. You can do this either of two ways:
Write a C# code which has a file watcher attached to the Excel file which uploads the Excel file using SSIS job to the database.
Create a scheduled SSIS job which imports the Excel file periodically.
Understanding the purpose would allow for greater elaboration.
This depends on the type of data you wish to edit.
For master data, if you have the Enterprise or Business Intelligence edition of SQL Server and Master Data Services set up, there is a plug-in for Excel:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh231024(v=sql.120).aspx
For transactional data, I would strongly advise against using Excel as a front-end and would recommend you to consider alternatives.
However, if you are compelled to go down this route, you can achieve this using VBA scripting and linking via a DAL (Data Access Layer) such as ADO.NET. Be aware that giving such power to your users could open up your system to sql injection attacks - only proceed so if you trust the users 100%. Another thing to take into consideration is validation checks - validation checks should be applied to every cell where data can be entered. More information can be found here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/316934
Wanted some opinions on which method is a better practice. We have a sales report that MUST be generated in a very specific format (down to the row colors and fonts).
I already have written a macro which pulls from our database and populates the entire workbook in about 15 seconds. The question is how should it be populated?
1) Process server-side: Users initiate the request on the intranet page. ASP.NET opens the workbook template, executes the macro and serves back the final sheet.
2) Process locally: Users download the blank template, run from their desktops which automatically connect to the database.
I like the first one because I can enforce the template, timing, users, and security of the data. But is running Excel automation on an internet web server recommended? I like the second option, but I'm afraid of losing standardization as template sheets begin floating around the company.
As for server side:
I highly.. HIGHLY.. recommend checking out the OpenOffice/LibreOffice XML format for spread sheets.
You can use the localc binary in headless mode to convert the XML file to XLSX or what have you. I use it to create PDF files instead of using ReportLab.
Alternatively here are some other projects that attempt to write to Microsoft formats directly:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlrd
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlwt
As for client side:
If you expect the user to be only using Excel and not any other spreadsheet software then go ahead and use an ODBC data source. ODBC will have to be configured per user unless you use some fun VBScript to pull the data from an HTTP server every time it is loaded. There is also the option of making an XLS spreadsheet that simply holds the data and including it into an XLS document as well which would be both a server and client XLS requirement.
Go for server side. Makes information simple to archive and share and will most likely be multi-platform as well.
If you like to use your first option, then you want to avoid using VBA on an installed instance of Excel on the server. This is extremely resource intensive and does not scale well. Instead, if you are writing ASP.NET code, then you should try using the Microsoft Office Interop functionality that is built into the .NET framework. It should possible to adapt your existing VBA code to run under ASP.NET with some changes, but you will have a much more reliable product in the end.
Example Code
However, as #whardier points out in his response, if this were for a large scale or public site, the suggestions he makes would be much more suitable and would scale much further.
I have a spreadsheet in Excel that connects to an internal DB using the odbc driver for the software (Action Request System). That works fine. Now I'm trying to move the Excel file to a SharePoint site so that our team can review the data and make notes in the same spreadsheet.
So, first I tried just moving the Excel file to the server, but realized that the connection saved in the file was pointing to the connection file on my computer. So I moved that to the SharePoint site, and this seems to be working... Except:
1) On some of the computers, it opens just fine. But I'd prefer it if the dialog that asks for the login and pw for the DB was customized.
2) On other computers, the software and drivers are installed, but not showing up in the user source list, so it throws an error. When the user goes to create a new connection, the driver is there, (so its not in the first list, but it is in the larger list).
3) Macs can open the file, but Excel 2008 can't do the macros and connections.
4) Opening the same file from the same site throws the Trust Center warning each time, even on the same computer/same user.
Is there a way to do any of the following?
Have a non-macro that keeps the user from saving (and thus overwriting) the sheet until it is confirmed that the user won't make changes to the connections/macros?
Allow the user to connect from a local config (in case they can set one up that works when the main one fails) so that they can connect using that one but not screw it up for everyone else.
Set the trust settings (local or on server, I suppose) so that any files from a specific SharePoint are always trusted?
Finally, and this is the big one...
Can you create a connection using a driver not on the local machine? If the driver is installed on a remote server, can Excel use that one? If that were the case, that would solve almost all other problems (Unless you're on a Mac).
I feel like I'm going at this slightly wrong, but since the team all need to see each others notes, our only other solution is to upload the data (from the DB) into a MySQL db so that they can make notes from their browser. This makes it more universally available, but forces us to script a lot of functions that are standard in Excel and create redundant DBs.
Wow! Access to the ARS via ODBC! I suggested that feature to the architect when I worked at Remedy HQ back in the nineties. Great times.
Anyhow, I think your approach of sharing an Excel sheet that connects to an ODBC source is not the easiest path. (As you've been discovering.) ]
ODBC is always a local driver, afaik. A client locally connects to ODBC. ODBC then can use the network to connect to the DB.
Instead, I suggest that you investigate setting up Access with a table that is remotely connected to the ARS system. You could then remotely open the Access table via file sharing as opposed to a dbms-connection. I believe that this would be easier to get going than your current path.
HTH,
Larry
It sounds like you are using a User DSN to make the connection. You can switch to a DSN less connection by using a connection string. If you need some help with that, can you post the code that needs modified?
First, thanks to both users that provided answers. Both of you were really helpful in getting my mind around the problem.
So, it turns out that while you can't easily connect to Action Request DB directly, AR does support Web Services.
Rather than attempt to make Excel, Access, PHP, or any other system deal with creating a Soap Client and handle the work themselves, I came up with an alternative that I think is fairly clever, if I do say so myself:
1) Created a php script that calls the Web Service with the requested data,
2) The script parses the response into a more generic XML form,
3) script echoes out the xml
4) Name the script "AR_Data_Request.xml"
5) Configure the directory, via the .htaccess file, to treat xml files like php
Now, I have a static xml file which always contains the most up-to-date data from Action Request. I can point any other apps (specifically Excel) to that xml file instead of having to write VBA code to query the web service directly (and still have to do it again for php).
The only problem is that I can't get the php to connect to the Web Service (doh!) but that will be my very next question.
Thanks again!