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Power BI for Office 365 and Excel integrations with Salesforce. With these new integrations, customers will be able to bi-directionally load data to Salesforce and Excel to build reports, visualize information and discover new insights. Salesforce integration with Power Query for Excel is in preview now, with general availability anticipated for the first half of 2015. Power BI integration with Salesforce is anticipated for the first half of 2015. A Salesforce app for Excel is anticipated for the second half of 2015. We are now into 2016 and no sign of this yet. I doubt we will ever see this now. I really really hate vapourware announcements at major tech conferences. From http://www.salesforce.com/company/microsoft-faq.jsp Oh yeah, it's now Google I/O 2016 and they have announced something similar for Google Sheets - moar vapourware! Coming in 2nd half of 2016. Yeah right, I will belive it when I see it. |
Wait, where is this bi-directionality? How? Why? Do we know anything about Salesforce for Excel yet? #askforce on twitter doesn't know about it, so it will be interesting to see. Hopefully it will overcome the 2000 row limit.
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Here is a very very basic Salesforce powerpoint presentation about Power Query - if you are into that sort of thing https://success.salesforce.com/06930000003vJfc
What I love about Power Query
- It's almost like my first programming love - Excel 4 macro language (XLM). This is the programming language I taught myself on, which is probably why I'm not much of a coder now. http://www.brighthub.com/computing/windows-platform/articles/84345.aspx
- You just do things in the workbook and it records what you are doing
- You can go back and edit earlier steps
- You can rename steps to document as you go
- You can insert new steps
- You can do very powerful functions or very simple things.
- You can repeat and repeat over and over again without losing the source data. It is so cool!
- You can run Salesforce reports right in Excel! Whenever you open up the spreadsheet there it is - your latest data * (caveats apply, as per usual).
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- Of course you can only use this if you have the APIs enabled (from Professional Edition, if you pay, up to Enterprise, Developer and Ultimate).
- Beware of security. DO NOT LOG INTO EXCEL AS AN ADMINISTRATOR! All of your data is then visible in Excel by anyone who opens up your PC. Use an Integration account that specifically only has read only access to the data you need it to have access to.
- The user remains logged in when you close excel, so it is logged in next time you open excel.
- Attachment object is not supported.
- Of course, this is one of my biggest issues - it keeps people reliant on Excel rather than trusting and using the data in Salesforce.
- You can't use Matrix Reports.
- Oh No! You can't log into Salesforce from Excel Power Query into a Partner Community - it's a stupid limitation in Excel Power Query where it requires Salesforce in the URL rather than just force.com (I was only testing it on a sandbox - hopefully it would be OK in Prod). And yes, the user has use API access.
Next Steps
Please comment below as to how far you have taken Power Query.
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