Alation Connected Sheets for Excel

Alation Connected Sheets is available as an add-in to Microsoft Excel, 2019 and above, web and desktop client.

Prerequisites

To use Alation Connected Sheets, your Alation instance must satisfy the following requirements:

  • Must be an Alation Cloud Service Instance running the Alation cloud native architecture. To determine if you’re already on the cloud native architecture or to request migration to it, contact Alation Support.

  • Must have available Creator or Explorer licenses for all users running Alation Connected Sheets.

In the 2023.1 release, the following restrictions apply:

  • Only four databases are supported—Snowflake, Postgres, MySql, Redshift—and those must be cloud instances.

Getting Started

To get started with Alation Connected Sheets for Excel, do the following:

  1. Open an Excel worksheet, then open Insert > Get Add-ins (or visit https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200005085?tab=Overview):

    ../../_images/ConnSheets_ExcelOfficeAddins.png

  2. Search for “Alation” in the search box:

    ../../_images/ConnSheets_AddExcelAddin.png

  3. Click Add to get the add-in. A dialog appears prompting you to agree to the license terms and privacy policy.

  4. Click Continue. The add-in opens and an Alation Connected Sheets icon is added to your Home ribbon:

    ../../_images/ConnSheets_ExcelAddin_Launched.png

Log Into Alation Instance

Once Alation Connected Sheets is launched, you will need to log into your Alation Cloud Service instance. Enter the Alation instance name and then click Login With Alation. A new window appears. Use your Alation OAuth credentials to log in for access to the Alation catalog from Alation Connected Sheets:

../../_images/ConnSheets_AlationLoginScreen.png

Download Directly Into Sheets

Once you’ve signed into your Alation Cloud Service instance, click Browse Catalog to Download to view supported database instances:

../../_images/ConnSheets_BrowseCatalog_excel.png

The Catalog Browser dialog appears:

../../_images/ConnSheets_CatalogBrowser_ExcelTopLevel.png

Navigate the catalog by clicking through the object hierarchy; data sources and queries are available. You can use search to find data objects. Search strings are applied on the Name, Title, and Description of the objects.

As you click through objects, you can view metadata information from the catalog—including any curation information such as trust check flags showing Endorsements, Warnings, or Deprecations:

../../_images/ConnSheets_CatalogBrowser_QueryExcel.png

When you have found a table or query you are interested in, click Next to connect to the relevant database. You are prompted to Save the Username and Password for the database:

../../_images/ConnSheets_CatalogBrowser_DBConnectExcel.png

You can preview data with filters or sort criteria before the download. You can also select the order of columns in the downloaded data. On query objects, you can apply filters only if the query supports customizable filter criteria:

../../_images/ConnSheets_CatalogBrowser_DataPreviewExcel.png

You can provide a sheet name for the downloaded data set. The data set will be downloaded into a new sheet by default, or you can override this by selecting “Insert into active cell”:

../../_images/ConnSheets_PopulatedSheet_Excel.png

Manage Downloaded Data Configurations

Alation Connected Sheets provides a snapshot of all the download dataset configurations in a spreadsheet and provides easy manageability to:

  • Instantly refresh data

  • Edit data source credentials

  • Delete a downloaded configuration

../../_images/ConnSheets_DatasetOptions_Excel.png