In our call center we use Excel VBA to extract integrated data through Avaya CMS supervisor. We have been using the same code for years.
One of our supervisors cannot run the report with her windows NT login. She receives the OLE timeout error when attempting. Every other user can run the report if they attempt to use their NT at the same computer.
We don't have anyone who knows VBA or Avaya well enough to troubleshoot (a temp was hired to code). I am intermediate level at best and find nothing wrong with the logic - as I said earlier it runs fine for me.
When I asked our dedicated IT department if this could be a user profile issue they informed me all supervisors have the same "cookie cutter" profile given to them. They state it has to be an issue with the VBA code.
Is there any other troubleshooting methods I can attempt at this point? Besides user permissions with Avaya and the code itself is there anything else that could interfere with VBA? Thanks in advance
It's possible that it could be an issue with the User Account Control (UAC), if that supervisor has it set on a higher level than others. When the UAC is turned on, it restricts what you can do in VBA. To check the UAC level, open the control panel, then 'User Accounts', 'Change User Account Control settings'
One alternative to using Excel VBA to extracting data is to use a web browser based reporting tool with full permission controls that exports regularly to Excel. NetLert's N-Focus Plus reporting tool can do that - it pulls data from CMS, stores it to a database on a server (as a result, you can store unlimited historical interval data), lets you set up any number of permissions for unlimited 'supervisors' so they only see their data or their groups' data, and they can export reports to excel or set up their own automatic daily/weekly/monthly report distribution. It also ties multiple CMS servers together in a single web-based interface, and does real-time and historical reporting... check it out at http://www.netlert.com/nfocus_video_overview.php
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Recently I have started working with Excel Online within the organization I´m working. Currently as a team we are using the online feature of Excel and work together simultaneously in the same sheet. In order to avoid many, daily, actions, I created so-called Flows to either group or ungroup certain data and have less (= group data) or more (= ungroup data). When I discovered the option to automate certain flows (via Power-Automate) I tried making an automated Flow that basically executes on a daily bases one of the Flows (group data) in order to start the day with an organized and neat workfile.
I created the following Flow;
Recurrence:
Interval: 1
Frequency: Day
Run script:
Location: OneDrive for Business
Document Library: OneDrive
File: File location
Script: Script name
Connection in use: Excel Online (Business)
Owner: Myself (both of file and flow)
What I have tried is the following:
When I am just executing the flow manually within Excel Online, it works good. Without
problems. It takes like 20 seconds and never had any issues.
I have played with the settings of the flow to see if it has any impact
(interval, frequency, other location, etc), without succes. After
like 20 minutes of runtime it returns a "Failed error" and the script
does not get executed (Error = BadGateway).
Additionally, I read somewhere online someone who had the same problem and it got solved by
indicating a Timeout limit (tried PT30S,
makes no difference other than the Failed error pops-up sooner).
I checked the subscriptions linked to my account and, amoung others, supposedly I have the
following; "Power Apps for Office 365" & "Power Automate for Office 365" licenses. Reviewing the
"Power Platform Licensing Guide - June 2022 (2)" I am assuming I do have the correct licenses
in order to be able to execute these kind of flows (see below).
However, I cannot seem to make it work. Is there anyone out there experienced with the Power Automate (online) functions within the Office 365 online environment who can identify what problem I am dealing with here and how to solve it?
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).
Im creating an Excel add in for a client but after submitting it for review I get feeback like:
1) Nothing appears to happen when we click on all highlighted
buttons
2) On first launch of your add-in, it is not clear what
the value proposition is.
3) It is not clear how to configure or use the add-in, or
how the user would benefit from using the add-in.
The add in is for a specific client so it will only work with sheets with a certain format and data. What can I do to get my add-in accepted?
If your add-in is designed to work for one specific organization only, is AppSource the most appropriate delivery mechanism for you? Have you considered the suitability of Centralized deployment?
If you decide that AppSource is the appropriate delivery mechanism, then the Enterprise policies may be of interest.
Please be aware that the validation team must be able to test the full functionality of the add-in should you wish to publish on AppSource. Please ensure that you provide full testing notes with your submission containing detailed information on the data required to test your add-in.
We've a real pain in our project where we ask a team of 50 resources to update a single excel sheet that's placed in a network location and when someone tries to update the data, it's locked by somebody else and they don't update it. So, they end up not updating the data.
I'm looking for an alternate solution like
creating a form in sharepoint/ jira - no sharepoint/ jira developer
getting data in mail - too tedious and lots of rework
creating a custom form and hosting it in local server - might work - any templates on this?
Or, any alternates? I'm out of ideas.
easiest thing would be to create a simple SharePoint-List. All Users can update their data at the same time and the Input-Form will be there automatically. (Can also be exported to Excel)
If you are on SharePoint-Online you could also have a look at Windows Form which provide more flexibility in creating the form.
And if you need even more capabilities you can have a look at PowerApps
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