Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
AI and Business Rule Engines for Excel Power Users

You're reading from   AI and Business Rule Engines for Excel Power Users Capture and scale your business knowledge into the cloud – with Microsoft 365, Decision Models, and AI tools from IBM and Red Hat

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Mar 2023
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781804619544
Length 386 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Tools
Arrow right icon
Authors (2):
Arrow left icon
Paul Browne (GBP) Paul Browne (GBP)
Author Profile Icon Paul Browne (GBP)
Paul Browne (GBP)
ALEX PORCELLI ALEX PORCELLI
Author Profile Icon ALEX PORCELLI
ALEX PORCELLI
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (22) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Part 1:The Problem with Excel, and Why Rule-Based AI Can Be the Solution FREE CHAPTER
2. Chapter 1: Wrestling with Excel? You Are Not Alone 3. Chapter 2: Choosing an AI and Business Rules Engine – Why Drools and KIE? 4. Chapter 3: Your First Business Rule with the Online KIE Sandbox 5. Part 2: Writing Business Rules and Decision Models – with Real-Life Examples
6. Chapter 4: More Decision Models, Business Rules, and Decision Tables 7. Chapter 5: Sharing and Deploying Decision Models Using OpenShift and GitHub 8. Chapter 6: Calling Business Rules from Excel Using Power Query 9. Part 3: Extending Excel, Decision Models, and Business Process Automation into a Complete Enterprise Solution
10. Chapter 7: Using Business Rules in Excel with Visual Basic, Script Lab, or Office Scripts 11. Chapter 8: Using AI and Decision Services Within Power Automate Workflows 12. Chapter 9: Advanced Expressions, Decision Models, and Testing 13. Part 4: Next Steps in AI, Machine Learning, and Rule Engines
14. Chapter 10: Scaling Rules in Business Central with Docker and the Cloud 15. Chapter 11: Rules-Based AI and Machine Learning AI – Combining the Best of Both 16. Chapter 12: What Next? A Look inside Neural Networks, Enterprise Projects, Advanced Rules, and the Rule Engine 17. Index 18. Other Books You May Enjoy Appendix A - Introduction to Visual Basic for Applications 1. Appendix B - Testing Using VSCode, Azure, and GitHub Codespaces 2. Appendix C - Troubleshooting Docker

Calling the decision service using Power Query

We explained earlier that Power Query allows you to connect Excel to a wide range of data sources. We’ll focus in the next section on using it to connect to the decision service REST API. But if you are curious about what else it can do, I’d encourage you to check out the Power Query and related Power BI series from Packt: https://subscription.packtpub.com/expert-reading-lists/power-bi-for-business-intelligence-beginner-to-advanced.

Connecting Excel via Power Query takes lots of simple steps that we will cover one by one: a simple REST call, passing in parameters, and a more advanced POST call, before combining them to link Excel and our decision service.

A simple Power Query REST example

We’re going to work through the most simple Power Query call to an external API possible – the GitHub API we encountered earlier at https://api.github.com/repos/OfficeDev/office-js.

This a GET call, with no parameters...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at €18.99/month. Cancel anytime