Excel Spreadsheet Automation with the QUERY Formula

The CData Excel Add-In for Google Analytics provides formulas that can query Google Analytics data. The following three steps show how you can automate the following task: Search Google Analytics data for a user-specified value and then organize the results into an Excel spreadsheet.

The syntax of the CDATAQUERY formula is the following: =CDATAQUERY(Query, [Connection], [Parameters], [ResultLocation]);

This formula requires three inputs:

• Query: The declaration of the Google Analytics data records you want to retrieve, written in standard SQL.

• Connection: Either the connection name, such as GoogleAnalyticsConnection1, or a connection string. The connection string consists of the required properties for connecting to Google Analytics data, separated by semicolons.

  Google uses the OAuth authentication standard. To access Google APIs on behalf on individual users, you can use the embedded credentials or you can register your own OAuth app.

  OAuth also enables you to use a service account to connect on behalf of users in a Google Apps domain. To authenticate with a service account, you will need to register an application to obtain the OAuth JWT values.

  In addition to the OAuth values, set Profile to the profile you want to connect to. This can be set to either the Id or website URL for the Profile. If not specified, the first Profile returned will be used.

• ResultLocation: The cell that the output of results should start from.

Pass Spreadsheet Cells as Inputs to the Query

The procedure below results in a spreadsheet that organizes all the formula inputs in the first column.

1. Define cells for the formula inputs. In addition to the connection inputs, add another input to define a criterion for a filter to be used to search Google Analytics data, such as Transactions.
2. In another cell, write the formula, referencing the cell values from the user input cells defined above. Single quotes are used to enclose values such as addresses that may contain spaces.
=CDATAQUERY("SELECT * FROM Traffic WHERE Transactions = '"&B2&"'","Profile="&B1&";Provider=GoogleAnalytics",B3)
3. Change the filter to change the data.