Excel Dashboards - Connect Excel file over the web

Scenario: You have created a dashboard using Excel File as the data source. Now you need to put the dashboard on the webserver using this web dashboard setup

You need to also make the Excel file available on the webserver so that the dashboard can connect to this Excel file and display information. You want to update the information in the Excel file on regular basis and upload or copy the file to the webserver directory.

Note: The dashboard uses ODBC connection to connect to Excel files. ODBC works only on windows machine. So technically you cannot connect to any Excel files over the internet or using http URL.

InfoCaptor internally has a mechanism to connect to files that are stored on the webserver and can access the excel files through URLs

When you launch the dashboard, it transparently connects to the Excel file by creating a local cache on the user’s machine.

To achieve this, you need to pick the following Excel Web File driver

and then provide the direct URL to the Excel file as shown above.

Click connect and it will create a local cache and connect.

You can also control how often the Excel cache is updated locally.

Click on the options button and then the Excel Cache settings tab

Set the number of days you want the Cache to expire.

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