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SharePoint Connections

Note

This feature may not be available in all product editions. For more information on available features, see Compare Editions.

You can create connections to your Microsoft SharePoint instance from the Alteryx Analytics Cloud.

You can create connections to:

  • SharePoint On-Premises installations in your enterprise infrastructure

  • SharePoint Online

Note

This connection supports connecting to SharePoint lists.

For more information on Microsoft SharePoint, see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/sharepoint/collaboration.

Limitations

Note

During normal selection or import of an entire table, you may encounter an error indicating a problem with a specific column. Since some tables require filtering based on a particular column, data from them can only be ingested using custom SQL statements. In this case, the problematic column can be used as a filter in the WHERE clause of a custom SQL statement to ingest the table.

  • For more information, please consult the CData driver documentation for the specific table.

  • For more information on using custom SQL, see Create Dataset with SQL.

Note

For filtering date columns, this connection type supports a set of literal functions on dates. You can use these to reduce the volume of data extracted from the database using a custom SQL query. For more information, see the pg_dateliteralfunctions.htm page in the driver documentation for this connection type.

  • Single Sign-On (SSO) is not supported.

  • Column names are not validated on publishing.

  • The SharePoint connection uses SharePoint APIs. As a result, transaction management and rollbacks are not supported.

  • No schema validation is performed as part of writing results to SharePoint Lists.

Prerequisites

  • The logged-in user must have required access to the tables and schema.

Configure

To create this connection, in theConnections page, select the Applications tab. Click the SharePoint card. See Connections Page.

Modify the following properties as needed:

Property

Description

SharePoint URL

Enter the URL for your SharePoint Site or sub-site. Example value:

https://exampleserver.sharepoint.com/sites/SharePointTest

SharePoint Edition

Product edition of SharePoint in use:

  • SharePointOnPremise - Use this option if you have an on-premises installation of SharePoint to which you can connect within your enterprise infrastructure.

  • SharePointOnline - Use this option if you are connecting to SharePoint Online.

    Note

    OAuth 2.0 for SharePoint is supported for SharePointOnline only.

Auth Scheme

Authentication scheme:

Schema

For Basic Auth integration, this value must be set to SOAP.

For OAuth 2.0 integration, this value must be set to REST.

User Name

Username to use to connect to SharePoint.

Password

Password associated with the above username.

Test Connection

After you have defined the SharePoint Edition, credentials, and connection string, you can validate those credentials.

Additional Connect String Options

Apply any connection string options that are part of your authentication to SharePoint.

A default string has been provided for you. For more information, see below.

Default Column Data Type Inference

Set todisabledto prevent the platform from applying its own type inference to each column on import. The default value isenabled.

Connection Name

Display name of the connection

Connection Description

Description of the connection, which appears in the application.

Connect string options

The following connection string is provided for you:

AutoCache=false;CacheMetadata=false;CacheTolerance=1;timeout=0;ShowPredefinedColumns=false

Parameter

Description

AutoCache

When enabled, the connection leverages any data that is automatically cached for each table. The default is false.

CacheMetadata

When enabled, table metadata can be retrieved from the SharePoint cache. The default isfalse.

CacheTolerance

This setting defines the duration in hours that objects are permitted to live in the cache. The default is1.

timeout

This setting defines the number of seconds that a query to the SharePoint database is allowed to run without a response. The SharePoint default timeout is 60, which may cause complex queries of larger datasets to timeout.

The default value in the Connect String Options is0, which means that there is no enforced timeout. Other timeouts may apply.

ShowPredefinedColumns

When enabled, users of the connection are permitted to view the columns that are created with the table, such as Created By and Modified By columns. The default isfalse.

For more information, see http://cdn.cdata.com/help/RSG/jdbc/Connection.htm.

Use

You can import datasets from SharePoint. See Database Browser.

Using SharePoint Connections

This section describes how you interact through the Alteryx Analytics Cloud with your SharePoint Lists.

  • SharePoint is a content management system for sharing and collaborating across the enterprise. For more information, see https://sharepoint.microsoft.com.

  • In SharePoint, data is stored in an object called a List. Lists can also include non-tabular data.

    Note

    Non-tabular data and some SharePoint List columns are converted to strings on import. For more information, see SharePoint Data Type Conversions.

Uses of SharePoint

The Alteryx Analytics Cloud can use SharePoint for the following tasks:

  1. Import datasets by reading from SharePoint Lists.

  2. Write to SharePoint Lists with your job results.

Before You Begin Using SharePoint

  • Read Access: Your SharePoint administrator must configure read permissions.

  • Write Access: You can write and publish jobs results to SharePoint.

Secure access

SSL is available over HTTPS for SharePoint connections.

Storing data in SharePoint

Your SharePoint administrator should provide database access for storing datasets. Users should know where shared data is located and where personal data can be saved without interfering with or confusing other users.

Note

The does not modify source data in SharePoint. Datasets sourced from SharePoint are read without modification from their source locations.

Reading from SharePoint

You can create a Alteryx dataset from a List stored in SharePoint.

Note

Reading data is supported for SharePoint Lists only.

For more information, see Database Browser.

Writing to SharePoint

You can write back data to SharePoint using one of the following methods:

  • Job results can be written directly to SharePoint as part of the normal job execution. Create a new publishing action to write to SharePoint.

  • For more information on how data is converted to SharePoint, see SharePoint Data Type Conversions.

Data Validation issues:

Note

Some Alteryx data types do not map exactly to SharePoint List data types. These differences may appear when writing to a new SharePoint List. For more information, see SharePoint Data Type Conversions.

Note

Column name validation is not supported.

  • No validation is performed for the connection and any required permissions during job execution. So, you can be permitted to launch your job even if you do not have sufficient connectivity or permissions to access the data. The corresponding publish job fails at runtime.

  • Prior to publication, no validation is performed on whether a target is a table or a view, so the job that was launched fails at runtime.

Reference

Supported versions: n/a

  • Read: Supported

  • Write: Supported

In this section: