Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

Stefan Helzle — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 14:17:54 GMT

In my humble opinion, Excel has no place in Appian. I understand that business people love their Excel, but this is only because it is the tool they know best. With Appian, we can provide solutions far superior to anything you can build in Excel. At least when building a process driven application.

And, yes Excel has its use cases.

Read this blog post as context: https://appian.rocks/2022/12/05/make-software-conduct-the-process/

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

Raúl Gómez Moya — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 14:00:59 GMT

Thank you very much Stefan, I agree with you, we will surely use RPA, but it strikes me that appian does not have this common functionality, or that there is no plugin for this, I see it as a very common use case. What do you think ?

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

Stefan Helzle — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 11:46:48 GMT

My secret to such "requirements" is, to push them back and provide an alternative way.

I think that trying to develop a Java plugin to execute macros in Excel is not exactly a simple task.

If you still "have to" do it this way, I think that RPA is your least painful option.

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

Raúl Gómez Moya — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 11:01:20 GMT

Actually, I had considered that. We have a UiPath team, and I had thought about creating an RPA to perform that function, but Stefan seems to be a solution that requires a lot of effort for the value it provides.

Another option that comes to mind is creating a plugin that executes macros based on a document, but I still think it requires a lot of effort for the value it brings.

Can you think of any other option? I don't believe we're the first ones to have the need to execute macros in Excel.

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

Stefan Helzle — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 09:36:05 GMT

The only way I can think of is to use the new RPA Excel features.

https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/23.2/rpa-9.1/actions-excel-license-required.html

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

Raúl Gómez Moya — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 09:32:35 GMT

Our use case is a document that is generated according to some business rules, but the index is not updated. We've created a macro that updates the index, so we need a way to be able to run the macro from that document. Is there any way?

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

rebecar369 — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 10:09:05 GMT

We want that some fields of the excel are calculated by formulas, these formulas have as parameters values extracted from bbdd.

Regards

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

ChristineLHutchison — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 21:17:56 GMT

Are there specific things that you are looking to do that you don't think Appian can do? or do well? If so, can you share, and maybe the community can give you some suggestions.

RE: Plugin to use macros and functions in an excel.

juergeng393 — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 15:32:31 GMT

Hi Rebeca,
not to my knowledge. Somehow this use case makes no sense to me. Why not using excel instead to run the macros?
If you would like to manipulate Excel sheets, than you should consider the RPA capabilities.

Maybe a fresh approach would be to look into the Excel Macros what the intent is from a business perspective and deciding
if its a good approach to build the functionality of data handling, calculation, and reporting with Appian.

Thanks

Juergen