How do I go about creating a control (ActiveX- preferable) in Sales Force (SF) to open up from the �Products� page in SF. The WIL/control should open up an excel spreadsheet residing in SF to which it should be able to pass an unique key from a �particular� Products page. This unique key will be used to retrieve data fields from the SF Products page that are not visible in the UI. The excel spreadsheet will be uploaded to SF�s Documents folder and contains macro�s used to calculate derived fields.
How do I go about creating a control (ActiveX- preferable) in Sales Force (SF) to open up from the �Products� page in SF. The WIL/control should open up an excel spreadsheet residing in SF to which it should be able to pass an unique key from a �particular� Products page. This unique key will be used to retrieve data fields from the SF Products page that are not visible in the UI. The excel spreadsheet will be uploaded to SF�s Documents folder and contains macro�s used to calculate derived fields.
How do I go about creating a control (ActiveX- preferable) in Sales Force (SF) to open up from the �Products� page in SF. The WIL/control should open up an excel spreadsheet residing in SF to which it should be able to pass an unique key from a �particular� Products page. This unique key will be used to retrieve data fields from the SF Products page that are not visible in the UI. The excel spreadsheet will be uploaded to SF�s Documents folder and contains macro�s used to calculate derived fields.
I am creating a conduit to bring info out of SF into an excel spreadsheet and then export back some data into SF.
How safe is our data if we establish a connection from our Excel Spreadsheet sitting on our end user's desktop to import and export our data?
Alternatively, is it possible to provide a "WIL" on the SF opportunities page and then launch the excel spreadsheet. If so what are the security concerns here? Will the Excel spreadsheet have to be deployed at SF's site? Also, are implementing "WIL" documented in the API's?
We just installed SalesForce.com at our Company and our Sales Force needs to be able to export data from our Opportunities page into an excel spreadsheet which has most of the data fields contained on the Opportunities page. Furthermore, our salesforce needs to be able to modify the data in our excel spreadsheet (based on some computations-embedded within the spreadsheet) and then when satisfied, move the new figures back to salesforce.com.
What approach do you suggest we follow.
We are all new to SalesForce and its API's. We are planning on using the latest, 3.0 API and have Excel 2000. Open to development languages, if needed, though prefer VB or C#.
We just installed SalesForce.com at our Company and our Sales Force needs to be able to export data from our Opportunities page into an excel spreadsheet which has most of the data fields contained on the Opportunities page. Furthermore, our salesforce needs to be able to modify the data in our excel spreadsheet (based on some computations-embedded within the spreadsheet) and then when satisfied, move the new figures back to salesforce.com.
What approach do you suggest we follow.
We are all new to SalesForce and its API's. We are planning on using the latest, 3.0 API and have Excel 2000. Open to development languages, if needed, though prefer VB or C#.
It�s here! Announcing the first public beta of the new sforce Toolkit for Office & VB. This COM control provides full access to the sforce Web service API from within VB 6, Office, ASP and other non-.NET Windows platforms.
To install the beta:
Un-install Office Edition via the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Log into salesforce.com. Go to Setup->Office Edition->Install Office Edition, and click Install Now.
Samples and Doc:
The attached Excel spreadsheet provides some quick (and dirty) examples of how to use the Office Toolkit from within VBA; code of other VB languages should be similar.
Additional documentation and samples will be available on release; for now, please provide feedback here, and let us know if you have any questions.
I need to build a WIL which opens an Excel spread-sheet and passes it values from the opportunity record. The excel sheet could be on salesforce or, possibly, already on the user's PC. At a minimum, I need to start a macro within the sheet and feed it the Opportunity ID.
I suspect that the solution will require significant expertise in both Excel and WIL's; I have a fair amount of both, but have been unable to come up with a solution yet.
We just installed SalesForce.com at our Company and our Sales Force needs to be able to export data from our Opportunities page into an excel spreadsheet which has most of the data fields contained on the Opportunities page. Furthermore, our salesforce needs to be able to modify the data in our excel spreadsheet (based on some computations-embedded within the spreadsheet) and then when satisfied, move the new figures back to salesforce.com.
What approach do you suggest we follow.
We are all new to SalesForce and its API's. We are planning on using the latest, 3.0 API and have Excel 2000. Open to development languages, if needed, though prefer VB or C#.
On April 12th, as part of sforce 3.0, we will be launching the sforce Toolkit for COM. The COM component wraps our current Partner API to make all of the capabilities of this Web service available to VB6 and VBA (non .NET) programs. As many of you have struggled that lack of support for Microsoft Web services for non .NET environments, this new Toolkit should greatly simplify the creation of sforce-based solutions.
Example uses include:
- Accessing sforce from VBA (Word and Excel) - Creating ASP (not ASP.NET) web pages that call sforce - Creating ActiveX controls and VB apps that use the Web service API
The sforce Toolkit for COM with be distributed automatically as part of an updated Office Edition, also available on 4/12. Documentation and samples will also be posted shortly thereafter. Let us know if you have any questions in the interim.
Message Edited by adamg on 03-17-200402:16 PM
Message Edited by mike kreaden on 04-13-200408:38 AM
Note: This add-in was written by Ron Hess at Neoforma, and was graciously open-sourced by him for the benefit of the sforce community � neither Ron nor salesforce.com can provide support for or guarantee correct performance of this tool � use at your own risk!
Downloading
A zip file with the .xla and this document is attached to the bottom of this message; rename the file from .zp to .zip to decompress.
Features
This simple add-in for Excel wraps the sforce API so that it can be used to query and update salesforce.com-based data directly from a spreadsheet. The tool allows API commands like describe, query, update and insert to be performed directly from cells, and has been tested on Excel XP (10) and 2003 (11). The tool uses XMLRPC, and is written in VBA.
Quick Start
Install the XLA file into Excel using the Tools -> Add-Ins... , then Browse to locate the file and open it.
In cell A1, enter the name of a valid entity.
Select �Describe Table� from the salesforce drop down menu
Enter a query in cells B1, B2, and B3; for example �company | contains | sforce�
Select �Query Table� from the salesforce.com drop down menu
After changing the value of a cell, select �Update selected cells� to send the new values back to salesforce.com.
Usage
Once the floating Menu bar appears you can begin to run commands.
First try "Describe New Table" to see the format that a table takes on the worksheet. The format is defined by the Excel "Current Region" so that multiple tables can be placed on one sheet. A Region is defined as the cells bounded by empty rows and columns.
The Table name appears in the upper left cell ( "A1" ) and the column names appear in row 2, ( "A2:Z2" ). The data begins in the range below that ("A3:Z999" )
To fill the table with data, you will need to construct a filter for the Query command, there is no list command. The filter is placed into three cells, in this example this range is B1 : D1, an example filter would be
A1="account"
B1="Account Name"
C1="contains"
D1="3M"
This returns the data specified by the labels found in row #2.
full example :
account|Account Name|contains|3M
account_id|Account Name|Billing City
With the cursor in or near these cells, the Query table menu item will query the database for accounts with the name 3M, it will return the id, name and city for these. For completeness there are provisions for 3 query filters, in the first row, each to the right of the preceding, i.e: E1:G1 and H1:J1 can hold each hold an additional filter
Some queries can produce a large list and Excel will appear to hang while working on very large queries, so please exercise care when constructing queries to avoid more than ~ 1000 rows.
Larger queries are best done in salesforce.com reports tab, exported to excel with the table ID in the first column, then you can add a new row, above the columns to hold th table name, then updates can be done.
Update, after a table is described and queried , you may edit cells, then select them, then click Update Selection menu button, only the cells which are selected will be updated to Salesforce.
Insert, this operates on the same data tables, substitute the entity ID with the string "new" and the row will be uploaded to Salesforce as a new record.
Describe a table , fills into a row of cells, the labels for all columns of the table
Query a table using filter operator and value, fill out the data columns of a table given filters in the first row of the current region of the worksheet
Update cells, allows changes made in cells of the worksheet to be uploaded or "sfdc.update" ed from the workbook to Salesforce.
Insert new rows into a table directly from a worksheet. Using the data on a row, insert the fields into a new record in the table described in the current region
public VBA Function "=sflookup(table name, cell)" allows looking up Salesforce ID's given names in a spreadsheet, very handy for indexing external lists into sales force ID's
Not Supported
Several features which would be handy are not implemented, these include
Compression is not used
Batching is not used
Version of the API is currently back-revved
Wizard functionality is highly desirable, not yet complete.
No optimization done for re-using sessions until they expire
