Connecting from Excel

The instructions on this page are based on Excel 2019.

Supported Excel Versions

The Windows version of Excel 2019 or later is required to connect to Open Data Blend Analytics.

Installing the Analysis Services Client Libraries

You may need to install the latest version of the Analysis Services OLE DB Provider (MSOLAP). This is available here.

Connecting to the Open Data Blend Analytics Server

Navigate to the 'Data' tab in the Excel ribbon and click Get Data > From Database > From Analysis Services.

You will be prompted for the connection details.

Enter the following details and select 'Use the following User Name and Password' then click 'Next':

Server: link://analytics.opendatablend.io

Username: Leave blank.

Password: Leave blank.

Instead of 'link://analytics.opendatablend.io' for the server, you can also use 'powerbi://api.powerbi.com/v1.0/analytics.opendatablend.io/Open Data Blend Analytics'

You will be prompted to sign into your account. Use your Analytics User details and follow the additional prompts to complete the login.

When prompted to 'Select Database and Table', the 'Open Data Blend Analytics' database, click 'Model' then click 'Next'.

If you want to work with only a subset of the model, you can choose one of the perspectives (i.e. a named subset of the model). For example, if you want to focus on analysing the prescribing data you would choose 'Prescribing'.

On the 'Save Data Connection File and Finish' step, update the data file name and friendly name if needed, then click 'Finish'.

On the 'Import Data' dialog, click 'OK' to proceed with creating a PivotTable that is connect to the Open Data Blend Analytics Model.

Now you can start analysing the data.

This is what the Open Data Blend Analytics experience looks like in Excel.

Open Data Blend Starter Files

We have created a set of Open Data Blend Starters which are files with a pre-configured connection to Open Data Blend Analytics. You can find the starter for Excel here.