TeamDesk Knowledge Base & Support

Slava Shinderov  Staff  9/8/2014 4:03:56 AM

Currently TeamDesk doesn't have this functionality.
Please consider using "External Users Pack" to invite outside clients into your database, so they will be able to see their reports inside your database at any time.

Philipp Matuschka (MMB) 9/10/2014 10:29:31 AM

As a medium priority I would like to see Excel documents as suggested by Rebecca supported. I suspect that they could be far more flexible than Word.

rishi uttam 11/12/2014 5:38:31 AM

Yes this would be good to have, customers still like their reports in Excel.

PDF would also be a great option (this was already suggested by another user)

Rebecca Sell 11/12/2014 5:43:07 AM

This has become more urgent for us and may impact the support of senior management and investors to our use of TeamDesk going forward.

Having 'external users' is not an option for us to work around. Our clients have established excel formats for the data we have to provide - not being able to export from TD straight into these formats is inefficient and goes against the company's policy of increased automation and improved efficiencies.

Excel reports are a 'norm' nowadays.

Are we able to link from an Excel form to TD? That would be another option.

Vanessa Lopez 11/24/2014 11:59:02 AM

Hello:

I need a report from my database showing name only and amount of credits the member has for the year. Any idea how to get it?

Slava Shinderov  Staff  11/24/2014 12:24:04 PM

@Vanessa please use "Ask a Question" tab in order to contact TeamDesk support.

rishi uttam 11/26/2014 6:48:54 PM

Is output to Excel being considered?

Slava Shinderov  Staff  11/27/2014 2:01:09 AM

@rishi it's not on our radar. It's still not clear for us why we should use Excel instead of Word to generate printable version of particular single record.
We're working on new TeamDesk API which will allow to easily connect from Excel to TeamDesk view/report, so you'll be able to have a dynamic snapshot of data inside Excel and configure report or build specific charts, etc. using Excel functionality.

rishi uttam 11/27/2014 2:17:46 AM

Hi Thanks,.... You mentioned you are still not clear about excel... Some tabulations need to be done outside of TD, exporting fields/records to excel would be a very good option.

Rebecca Sell 11/27/2014 2:19:52 AM

@Slava We would welcome the 'query' functionality you describe above - as I said in my earlier post "Are we able to link from an Excel form to TD? That would be another option."

What is the timescale for this please? We are busy building integrated data workflow as you'll see from our DBs and the final piece of the puzzle is professional reporting quality for senior management, customers and investors.

Rebecca Sell 11/27/2014 2:20:36 AM

PS. I know there is already the ability to do a 'web query' from Excel, but it's rather clumsy.

Slava Shinderov  Staff  11/27/2014 2:44:24 AM

@Rebecca please use "Ask a Question" tab to contact TeamDesk support. Please describe, in terms of your database, what kind of report you're trying to build with the help of Excel, so we'll be able to understand if it's possible and point you into the right direction.

Rebecca Sell 11/27/2014 2:46:37 AM

@Slava I dont need help Slava, I need the functionality that myself and other users are requesting.
Thank you for your concern.

Ivan Papish 10/30/2017 3:27:56 PM

@Slava Hi there! How is it going with exporting to Excel? Was the issue with excel resolved? Is the new TeamDesk API which will allow to easily connect from Excel to TeamDesk view/report, already created?

Dale Oliver 6/26/2019 7:16:52 AM

Many of our clients require stock movement reports and stock lists from our Teamdesk Databases. For stock related queries working in excel is a definite must as these reports are often automated. In order to investigate variances and other stock related queries Excel is typically used to speed up the process.

I hope that this will be considered in future as this is often requested and the fact that we can't provide is always a contentious issue for us.

Amber Packard 3/19/2025 1:19:54 PM

Good day,
Has there been any further discussion on this topic? I would also like to be able to generate documents/reports as .xls

Jorge Solá 6/8/2025 6:03:50 PM

While the only formats to generate documents in TeamDesk are Word and PDF, you can also set up a trigger to generate an Excel file of a view that you can then send by email. Here is how to set it up:

• Create a view for the report that you would like to send out in Excel format. Take note of its id.

• In the USERS table:

o Create a Text column named “My Password”. Write there in your user record your TeamDesk access password. Then remove this column from the form & from views.

o Create a File Attachment column named “Excel File”.

o Create a formula-URL column named “URL to Export Excel”, with the following formula:
- URLRoot() & "/exportview.aspx/ExcelFilename.xlsx?format=2&id=XXX"
- Replace XXX with the view id
- Replace ExcelFilename with whatever name you want to give your Excel file
- Optionally, you can use a formula for the filename, for instance a formula that will include the date of the report
- Optionally, you can add filters to the view, for instance to only include records that were created the previous week

o Create a formula-URL column named “URL to Store Excel”, with the following formula:
- Left(URLRoot(), "/secure") & "/secure/gateway.aspx?action=Login&email=" & URLEncode(UserToEmail(User())) & "&password=" & URLEncode([My Password]) & "&keep=1&ReturnURL=" & URLEncode([URL to Export Excel])

• In the USERS table, create a periodic trigger with filter [User]=ToUser(“your email")

o Add an Update Record action named Generate Excel

o Set Execute Triggers to Yes

o Add an assignment to copy [URL to Store Excel] to [Excel File]

• In the USERS table, create a record change trigger activated when the value in [Excel File] changes

o Add an action to email the Excel file to the recipients

o In this action, under Attach File, select the Excel File column

• Optional: Add a filter to the view in order to only include in the Excel file records that were created the previous week:

o Append the following to the “URL to Export Excel” formula:
- & "&s=&af_YYYf=" & FirstDayOfWeek(Today()-7d) & "&af_YYYt=" & LastDayOfWeek(Today()-7d)
- Replace YYY with the [Date Created] column Id (of the table where you created the report view)

L. C. Parker 6/11/2025 7:06:29 PM

Creative thank you

Daniel Luz 2/20/2026 8:44:04 AM

I ran Jorge's solution through Claude Code to understand it better, and it came back with an interesting analysis:

Jorge's approach is genuinely creative — chaining 5 native TeamDesk features (periodic trigger → gateway login URL → exportview download → file attachment storage → email trigger) to solve a problem that's been open for 11 years. Respect for that.

However, there are two concerns:

1. Security: The user's password is stored in plain text in a Text column. Even if hidden from views and forms, it's still accessible via API, backups, and by any admin. If the password changes, the automation breaks silently.
2. Fragility: Five chained components mean five points of failure with no way to debug which step broke.

---
A simpler alternative using n8n (or similar automation tools)

The same result can be achieved with 4 linear steps, no password exposure, and full control over the Excel output:

Step 1 — Schedule Trigger
Set your frequency: weekly, monthly, first Monday of the month, etc.

Step 2 — HTTP Request to TeamDesk API
GET https://www.teamdesk.net/secure/api/v2/{dbId}/{table}/select.json
Authorization: Bearer {your_api_token}
Add ?column= parameters to select specific columns, and &filter= to limit the date range. The API token is stored encrypted in n8n's credential manager — never exposed in a database field.

Step 3 — Spreadsheet File node
Converts the JSON response into an .xlsx file. This is a native n8n node — no code needed. You can control column names, ordering, and sheet names.

Step 4 — Send Email node
Sends the email with the Excel file attached. Supports Gmail, SMTP, Outlook, etc. The email body can include dynamic data (record count, date range, etc.).

---
Why this is worth considering

Password handling — Jorge's approach stores the password in plain text in a table field. With n8n, the API token is encrypted in the credential store.

Complexity — Jorge's approach requires 5 components (2 Formula-URLs, 2 triggers, 1 hidden field). The n8n approach uses 4 nodes in a straight line.

Excel formatting — Jorge's approach exports the raw view with no control. With n8n, you have full control: rename columns, add calculations, merge data from multiple tables into one report.

Filtering — Jorge's approach requires hacking URL parameters (af_YYYf=). n8n uses native API filters (filter=, top=).

Debugging — Jorge's approach offers no visibility into which step failed. n8n shows each node's input and output in the execution log.

Multiple reports — Jorge's approach requires duplicating the entire structure for each report. In n8n, you duplicate the workflow or parameterize it.

The biggest hidden advantage: with n8n you can transform the data between fetching and generating the Excel — rename columns to client-friendly names, calculate totals, format dates, even combine data from multiple tables into one report. Jorge's approach exports the view as-is with no transformation possible.

---
n8n is free and open-source (https://n8n.io), so there's no cost barrier. That said, if you want to stay 100% inside TeamDesk, Jorge's solution works — just consider creating a dedicated read-only service account instead of using your personal password.

Slava Shinderov  Staff  2/20/2026 9:30:53 AM

@Daniel, regarding step 2: unfortunately, the Select method in the TeamDesk REST API returns up to 500 records per request. If you have more, you need to use pagination by combining the top/skip parameters. This is difficult to implement inside TeamDesk using built-in functionality alone.

Daniel Luz 2/20/2026 10:02:13 AM

Thanks Slava! That's actually a great point that reinforces why an external tool like n8n is valuable here.

The 500-record pagination limit is trivial to handle in n8n. The workflow would use a simple loop:

1. Loop node fetches records in batches of 500 using top=500&skip=0, then skip=500, skip=1000, etc.
2. Stops when a batch returns fewer than 500 records
3. Merges all batches into a single dataset
4. Passes the complete dataset to the Spreadsheet File node for Excel generation

This is a standard pattern in n8n — a SplitInBatches or Code node handles it in about 10 lines of JavaScript:

let allRecords = [];
let skip = 0;
const top = 500;
let hasMore = true;

while (hasMore) {
const response = await this.helpers.httpRequest({
url:
`https://www.teamdesk.net/secure/api/v2/{db_id}/{table}/select.json?top=${top}&skip=${skip}`,
headers: { 'Authorization': 'Bearer {token}' }
});
allRecords = allRecords.concat(response);
hasMore = response.length === top;
skip += top;
}

return [{ json: { records: allRecords } }];

So even a table with 10,000+ records can be exported to Excel in a single workflow run — something that would indeed be very difficult to achieve with TeamDesk's built-in functionality alone, as you mentioned.

This is one of the advantages of the n8n approach: it works around TeamDesk's API limits transparently, while keeping the workflow visual and maintainable.

Jorge Solá 2/20/2026 9:23:54 PM

I must confess I had a chuckle reading Claude's comments on my creativity. To give credit where credit is due, though, I must say that while developing this solution I received invaluable help and advice from TeamDesk's support team.

Just a little note about the user's password exposure: In my solution above, yes, it would be preferable if the user was not asked to type their password. And storing the password in the USERS table is not the best. If instead of having a trigger start the whole process, the Excel file can be generated on demand in your application, you can ask the user to input their password, & delete it through an action as soon as the Excel file has been stored in the proper attachment column.

Anyway, I'll try Claude's/Daniel's solution. It's nice when we build on each other's ideas.