This guide will help you understand the basic concepts of CloudExtend Excel. Topics covered include:

Templates are used by CloudExtend Excel to define the Salesforce Objects that users will interact with.

The CloudExtend Excel Add-In allows Salesforce Objects & Fields to be selected via an easy-to-use interface. When a template is loaded on a Worksheet, it becomes an Excel table and is bound to a Salesforce object. Each column in the table is bounded to a Salesforce field.

The table can then be used to retrieve and/or update data from Salesforce, as well as create new records in Salesforce.

Step 1: Click on the + sign to create a new template.

Step 2: Type or scroll to select the Salesforce object the template will be associated with.

Step 3: Select your object. In the example below, I chose Opportunity.

Step 4: Type ahead and search for the fields you want to have in your template. Scroll down for more fields.

To remove a field hover over it and click on the Trash Can Icon that appears to the right.
When you’re done adding your fields, hit next.

💡 TIP:  You can also reorder the fields by clicking on a field and moving it to the new desired position.

Step 5: Give your template a name and save it. Use Save & Load to start using it right away.

Step 6: You can load your template by clicking on it in the list of templates.

You will be warned that loading a table will clear the sheet. Click confirm to load the template on the sheet.

💡 Row 1 is used to hold the mapping data from Excel to Salesforce. Pro users can edit these values and even insert columns on the fly and associate them with Salesforce fields without going back to the Template Editor.

Salesforce field labels :

When creating a template, the field label that appears on the object in Salesforce may be different than the field name. The field name is what is initially displayed in the template field list. If you are not sure of the field label go into Salesforce:

Salesforce field labels - You can see below the Field label is called ‘Account Name’ but the Field Name is just Account. The Account is what you would select in CloudExtend Excel.

There are three ways to retrieve data from Salesforce:

Download

Refresh

Reports

Step 1: Clicking Download will bring in all Salesforce records for the object associated with the template.  This is not typically desired, therefore Celigo recommends using a Data Filter.
​
The example below shows a filter created to bring in all opportunities where the owner is "Justine Burdon" AND where the opportunity stage is NOT IN "closed/won or closed/lost".
​

Step 2: After you click DOWNLOAD again in the middle, the relevant records are returned to Excel. Now you can manipulate the data and send it back to Salesforce by updating as described later.

Refresh is available when you have one or more Object ID’s populated in the ID column (In this case an Opportunity ID). It is a quick way to bring in one or more records from Salesforce for editing.
​
​Step 1: Take an ObjectID from Salesforce and paste it into the ID field (Column B in Excel). Click on Refresh and it will populate all the fields in your template with the latest data from Salesforce.

Refresh also brings the latest Salesforce data into Excel.
If you have a sheet with previously imported data and want to update the sheet with the latest data from Salesforce, you can you REFRESH option in CloudExtend Excel for Salesforce.

Step 1: In the example below the Opportunity Owner field is being updated from "Integration User "to user "Vaibhava". To update the value, just type the name partially in "Owner" column in Excel, and CloudExtend will dynamically identify picklist values after you type and auto-complete the complete value.

If it finds multiple matches for entered value, the user will be alerted to pick the correct value by clicking on the view picklist values in the task pane.

To pick the matching value,

It is not necessary to use the Picklist to populate each cell in the Column. Once you have retrieved the value you can copy/paste, drag, etc. to populate the values.

Step 2: Once the data you want to update is ready, click Update and then check off All Rows and then click INSERT/UPDATE in the middle. Those opportunities will be updated in Salesforce with the new owner. The Record ID will turn green on each row as the updates are successfully completed.

Notifications: CloudExtend will give you 2 types of color-coded notifications after an update

Record ID’s in Green indicates a successful update.

Record ID's in red indicate an error and the update was NOT pushed to Salesforce. Correct the error(s) and update again.

❗❗ Note: Summary and Matrix reports not supported.

Step 1: Click on the hamburger icon on the top left-hand side of the CloudExtend toolbar.

Step 2: Click on Reports.

Step 3: All of your Salesforce reports will generate. (Although all reports show, you will only be able to view detailed level reports in the CloudExtend, ie non-summary and non-matrix).

Step 4: Choose the report you want to pull into Excel and click on Yes.

Step 5: Your report will load and data will begin to populate the template from Salesforce. CloudExtend can download only the first 2000 records from your report. Make sure to apply additional filters to limit the results count to 2000 records.

CloudExtend tables already interact with Salesforce. When your table loads CloudExtend begins to cache possible values for drop-down fields in the Picklist at the top right of the Add-In. You can simply start entering values in Columns to begin. A more common use case, however, is for end-users to use Excel formulas (or even copy/paste) to populate the table.

The video below shows a quick overview of creating new records in CloudExtend Excel for Salesforce

Here are the steps involved in creating new records in Salesforce using CloudExtend Excel for Salesforce

Step 1: Load your template in the Excel sheet and enter the information. In the example below I want to add a new lead.

Step 2:  Click on Update and then INSERT/UPDATE as shown below.

Step 3: The lead is now created in Salesforce (evidenced by the “Operation Successful for 2 records” message in the Add-in as well as the color green in the Id column.

Step 4: See the new lead below in Salesforce by copying the lead ID and pasting it into the URL.

❗❗ Notes:
1. CloudExtend obeys all permissions set in Salesforce. If your role does not allow you to delete in Salesforce you won’t be able to delete with CloudExtend.
2. Best practice is to save a workbook after you delete records. This will ensure you can recover them if necessary.

Step 1: Click on Delete then select only the rows you want to delete or ‘All Rows’ and then DELETE.

Step 2: The 9 selected Opportunities are now deleted in Salesforce (evidenced by the “Operation Success for 9 records” message in the Add-in as well as the color gray in the Reserved and Record ID columns.

Accidentally deleted the data? No worries, in most cases removing the values from the Record ID’s and clicking on ‘Update’ will create new Opportunity Records with identical values.