SQL Data Transform and Export to Excel

Overview

FlowLibs - SQL Data Transform and Export to Excel is a manually triggered cloud flow that executes a SQL Server transform query (supporting column renames, filters, and aggregations via native T-SQL), then exports the results to both a CSV file on SharePoint and structured rows in an Excel Online workbook. This flow demonstrates a no-code ETL pattern for extracting, transforming, and loading SQL data into business-friendly formats.

Trigger Type: Manual (Instant — button trigger with optional text input)

Use Case

Finance and Operations teams often need to pull transformed data from SQL Server databases — applying column renames, filters, and aggregations — and deliver the results in Excel format for reporting, auditing, or downstream analysis. This flow automates that entire pipeline: run a T-SQL transform query, generate a CSV file on SharePoint for archival, and write each row into a structured Excel table for interactive use.

When to Use: Scheduled or ad-hoc data exports, report generation, SQL-to-Excel ETL pipelines, audit snapshots.

The flow is ideal for teams that:

• Finance teams running ad-hoc or scheduled data exports
• Operations teams generating audit snapshots from SQL data
• Report generation pipelines that need a CSV archive plus an interactive Excel table
• SQL-to-Excel ETL workflows that apply T-SQL transforms (renames, filters, aggregations)

Flow Architecture

Environment Variables

Connectors & Connections

Note — All connections are referenced as solution connection references; the flow is portable between environments as long as a connection is mapped at import time.

Customization Guide

Almost every realistic variant of this flow can be implemented by changing environment variable values. A few cases require small edits inside the flow definition — those are called out explicitly below.

Changing the SQL Query

Update the flowlibs_CF295_TransformQuery environment variable with your T-SQL. The query should return a flat result set — column names from the query become the fields available in downstream actions (Select, CSV, Excel).

Changing the Export Location

Update flowlibs_CF295_ExcelFilePath to point to a different SharePoint document library path. Ensure the Excel workbook and table already exist at that path before running the flow.

Adding Email Notification

Add a Send an email (V2) action after Compose_Export_Summary using the Office 365 Outlook connector. Reference the summary output for row count and file path details.

Modifying Column Mapping

Edit the Select_Normalized_Columns action to change how SQL result columns map to your Excel table columns. The from field references the SQL output; the key/value pairs define the normalized column names.

Key Expressions

The flow is intentionally light on Power Fx / WDL gymnastics — the heaviest expressions are the branch-name concatenation and the approval outcome check. They are listed below in the order they appear in the flow.

length(body('Execute_SQL_Transform_Query')?.resultsets?.Table1)

join(first(body('Select_Normalized_Columns')), ',')

formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'yyyyMMdd_HHmmss')

json(concat('{"rowCount":', variables('varRowCount'), ',"filePath":"', variables('varExcelFilePath'), '","exportedAt":"', utcNow(), '"}'))