SharePoint Setup Guide

Follow our setup guide to connect SharePoint to Fivetran.

Prerequisites

To connect SharePoint to Fivetran, you need:

• A SharePoint account
• A SharePoint folder containing files with supported file types and encodings
• The ability to grant Fivetran permission to read from this account

Setup instructions

Choose SharePoint access type

Decide how you want Fivetran to access your SharePoint site. You can configure the connection in different ways depending on your permission levels within Microsoft.

In the connection setup form, select your Access Type:

• Access to All Sites: Access to all SharePoint sites. The following roles can set up the connection:

  • SharePoint Administrator (admin). See our setup instructions.
  • SharePoint User (non-admin). However, a SharePoint admin has to perform the configuration steps in the Azure portal. See our setup instructions.
  Fivetran needs files.read, offline_access, and Sites.Read.All permissions for this access type.

• Access to Limited Sites: Access to a specific SharePoint site. To set up a connection with this access type, the user must have one of the following Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) roles:

  • Global Administrator
  • Privileged Role Administrator
  These roles are required to grant Fivetran the necessary User.Read and Sites.Selected permissions. A SharePoint Administrator role alone is not sufficient. See our setup instructions.

Configure SharePoint access

(Optional) Access to All Sites - connection setup by admin

A SharePoint admin must authorize and approve the Fivetran application. Skip to the Find folder URL step.

(Optional) Access to All Sites - connection setup by non-admin

The SharePoint admin can do either of the following:

• Allow users to directly consent the apps. Do the following:

  1. In the Azure Portal, go to Microsoft Entra ID > Enterprise applications > Consent and permissions.

     Microsoft Entra ID was formerly Azure Active Directory.

  2. Go to User consent settings. Select Allow user consent for apps from verified publishers, for selected permissions (Recommended). Click Save.

     

  3. Go to Permission classifications. Click Add permissions.

  4. Select Microsoft Graph. Add the following permissions:

  • Sites.Read.All
  • Files.Read
  • offline_access
  • profile
  • openid
  • email

  

• Allow users to ask for admin consent. Do the following:

  1. In the Azure Portal, go to Microsoft Entra ID > Enterprise applications > Consent and permissions. Go to Admin consent settings.
  2. Set the Users can request admin consent to apps they are unable to consent to toggle to Yes.
  When setting up the connection, during authorization, you will see an approval prompt, and you must click Request Approval. In the Admin consent settings tab, the SharePoint admin will see this request in the Admin consent requests section. The admin must approve the request.

Skip to the Find folder URL step.

(Optional) Access to Limited Sites - connection setup

Find Tenant ID

1. In the Azure Portal, go to Microsoft Entra ID.

2. Go to the Overview tab and copy the Tenant ID. You will need it later in this step.

   

Find SharePoint Site ID

1. Log in to Sharepoint and then navigate to the site you would like to connect to Fivetran.

2. Go to Home and copy the site URL.

   

3. Append /_api/site/id to the copied URL. Enter the updated URL in the browser.

4. Find your Site ID as illustrated below. Ensure that you are signed in to your SharePoint site when performing this step.

   

5. Make a note of the Site ID. You will need this later in this step.

Grant Fivetran access to your site

To grant Fivetran access to the SharePoint site where your folder is present, you must provide read permission of your site to the Fivetran application. You can grant permission in two ways:

• By using the Microsoft Graph Explorer tool:

  1. Log in to the Microsoft Graph Explorer.
  2. Click the profile avatar and then click Consent to permissions > Consent for Sites.FullControl.All.
     You grant Sites.FullControl.All permission to Microsoft Graph Explorer, and not to the Fivetran application. Using the tool, you grant read permission of your site to the Fivetran application. You can revoke the permission for Microsoft Graph Explorer after connection creation.

  3. Run the Microsoft Graph query. Replace {site_id} with the Site ID you found above. The query grants permission of your site to Fivetran application with ID fc84eb7d-8983-4279-858a-45a9dafd02b0.
  If the permission is successfully granted, the query returns 201 created response.

• By creating an app in Microsoft Entra ID:

  1. In the Azure Portal, go to Microsoft Entra ID > App Registrations > New Registration.

  2. Enter the Name and click Register.

     

  3. In the Overview section of your app, make a note of Application (client) ID. You will need it later in this step.

  4. Navigate to API permissions > Add a permission > Microsoft Graph > Application permissions > Add Sites.FullControl.All permission.

     NOTE: You don't grant Sites.FullControl.All permission to Fivetran. Fivetran doesn't have access to this app. Using this app, you grant read permission of your site to Fivetran. You may delete your app after connection creation.

  5. Click Grant Admin Consent for {your tenant name} > Yes.

  6. Go to Certificates & secrets > Add New client secret. Make a note of the value. This is the client secret value that you will need later in this step.

     The value won't be available once you leave the page.

  7. In Postman, click Import > Raw Text. Paste the following curl request:

       curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" -d 'client_id=&scope=https%3A%2F%2Fgraph.microsoft.com%2F.default&client_secret=&grant_type=client_credentials' 'https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant_id}/oauth2/v2.0/token'
     

     You can also use terminal to run the curl request.

  8. In the request body, specify the client_id and client_secret values you found above.

  9. In the request URL, replace {tenant_id} with the Tenant ID value you found above.

  10. Send the request and make a note of the Access Token that is generated. You will need this later in this step.

  11. In Postman, import the following curl request:

       curl --location -g --request POST "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/{site_id}/permissions" \
       --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
       --header 'Authorization: Bearer {access_token}' \
       --data-raw '{
                    "roles": ["read"],
                    "grantedToIdentities": [{
                           "application": {
                           "id": "fc84eb7d-8983-4279-858a-45a9dafd02b0",
                           "displayName": "Fivetran App for Limited Access"
                          }
                    }]
                 }'
      

  12. In the request header, replace {access_token} with the access token generated above.

  13. In the request URL, replace {site_id} with the Site ID you found above.

  14. Send the request. The request grants permission of your site to the Fivetran application with ID fc84eb7d-8983-4279-858a-45a9dafd02b0.

      If the permission is successfully granted, the request returns 201 created response.

Find folder URL

1. Log in to your SharePoint account.

2. Navigate to the folder you want to sync.

3. Find the URL of the folder. Click Copy link and then Copy to make a note of it. You will need it to configure Fivetran.

   

Select sync strategy

1. In the connection setup form, select the Sync Strategy: Magic Folder or Merge Mode

2. Enter the Destination schema name of your choice.

3. If you selected Merge Mode as your sync strategy, enter the Destination table name.

4. If you selected Access Type as Access to Limited Sites, enter the Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) Tenant ID of your Sharepoint Site, you found above.

5. Click Authorize. You will be redirected to your SharePoint account to authorize Fivetran's access. Once you have finished, you will be redirected back to Fivetran.

   Ensure that you (or the user who authorizes) is a member of the SharePoint site you want to sync.

Configure connection

Merge Mode

In the setup form, choose your configuration options. Using these configuration options, you can select subsets of your folders, specific types of files, and more to sync only the files you need in your destination. In addition, setting up multiple connections targeted at the same file system but with different options allows you to slice and dice a file system any way you'd like.

Select files

• Base folder path - Enter the Folder URL you found in Step 3. Use this field, specify a portion of the file system in which you'd like Fivetran to look for files. We examine files under the specified folder and all of its nested subfolders for files we can sync.

• (Optional) File Pattern - Use a regular expression as the file pattern to decide whether or not to sync specific files. The pattern applies to everything under the prefix (folder path). If you're unsure what regular expression to use, you can leave this field blank, and we'll sync everything under the prefix. For example, if under the prefix you have a folder data, which has sub-folders, subFolder1, subFolder2, etc. These sub-folders have JSON files with the format report_03/12/2050.json. Use the following regex patters to decide whether or not to sync specific files:

  • data/.* matches all files in the data folder, including those in subfolders.
  • data/.*json matches all JSON files in the data folder, including those in subfolders.
  • data/subFolder2/report_.*\.json matches all the JSON files in the subFolder2 folder that has a name that starts with the prefix report_.. For example, report_file.json.
  • report_\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4}\.json matches all the JSON files that begin with the prefix report_ and are followed by a date format of DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY. For example, report_03/12/2050.json.
  You can learn to write your regex and test it out.

• (Optional) Click Preview Files to validate the file pattern.

  You can skip this intermediate test and proceed to the next step. However, if you choose to skip, we will perform this test once you have finished your configuration.

• Compression - If your files are compressed but do not have extensions indicating the compression method, you can decompress them according to the selected compression algorithm. If all of your compressed files are correctly marked with a matching compression extension (.bz2, .gz, .gzip, .tar, or .zip), you can select infer. If you select uncompressed, we do not decompress the files and sync the uncompressed files. If you choose a compression format, we decompress every file using the format you select. For example, if you have an automated CSV output system that GZIPs files to save space but saves them without a .gzip extension, you can set this field to GZIP. We will decompress every file that we examine using GZIP.

• (Optional) Archive Folder Pattern - Use a regular expression to filter and sync files from archived folders. We sync the files in compressed archives with filenames matching the specified pattern. If there are multiple files within archive (TAR or ZIP) folders, you can use the archive folder pattern to filter file types.

  For example, if you specify the archive folder pattern as .*json, we will sync only the files that end in a .json file extension from the archive folder.

  This is only used to filter out the files inside the archived folder. All the file matching the File Pattern will be listed

Format

• File Type - Note that all files are processed as the selected file type. Use the File Pattern field to select the file extensions you want to sync.

  If your file type is CSV, TSV, or log, then enter the following details:

  • (Optional) Delimiter - Specify the delimiter used in your CSV file. If your CSV file uses a custom delimiter, replace the default comma , with your specific delimiter. For example, if your file is tab-delimited, enter \t, or if it’s pipe-delimited, enter |. If you leave this field blank, we’ll attempt to detect the delimiter for each file automatically. However, note that automatic detection may not work in all cases. If your files sync with an incorrect number of columns or use a unique delimiter, consider specifying the delimiter. You can store files with different delimiters in the same folder. For more details on how delimiter inference works, see our documentation.
  • Quote character - Typically CSVs use double quotes " to enclose a value. Set the toggle to off if you don’t want to use an enclosing character.
  • Non-Standard escape character - Set the toggle to ON if your CSV generator uses non-standard ways of escaping characters like newline, delimiter, etc. Not standard in CSVs.
  • Null Sequence - Set the toggle to ON if your CSVs use a special value indicating null. Specify the value indicating null only if you are sure your CSVs have a null sequence. Typically, CSVs have no native notion of a null character. However, some CSV generators have created one, using characters such as \N to represent null.
  • Skip Header Lines - Use this option to skip over a fixed number of header lines at the beginning of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped header lines field, specify the number of header lines you want to skip.
  • Skip Footer Lines - Use this option to skip over a fixed number footer lines at the end of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped footer lines field, specify the number of footer lines you want to skip.
  • Headerless files - Set the toggle to ON if your CSV-generating software doesn't provide a header line. Fivetran can generate generic column names and sync data rows with them.
  • Line Separator - Line separators are used in CSV files to separate one row from the next. By default, we use the new line character \n as the line separator. If you use a different line separator for your CSV files, replace \n with your custom line separator.
    This field is only available if you have selected CSV as your file type.

  If your file type is JSON or JSONL, then select the following:

  JSON Delivery Mode - Use this option to choose how Fivetran should handle your JSON data.

  • Packed: We load all your JSON data into the _data column without flattening it.
  • Unpacked: We flatten one level of columns and infer their data types.
  {Private Preview} If your file type is unstructured, do the following:

  You can sync unstructured files only if you have configured your connection with a BigQuery, Databricks, or Snowflake destination.

  Select unstructured to sync documents, images, or plain text files to your destination’s object storage, excluding compressed files. Learn more about unstructured file replication in our documentation.

• Primary Key used for file process and load - Use this option to let Fivetran know how you'd like to update the files in your destination. When you modify a previously synced file, the option you select determines if we should replace the rows in the destination table or append new rows to the table:

  • If you select Upsert file using file name and line number, we will upsert your data using the surrogate primary keys _file and _line. If a file has a unique name, we will sync the data for that file as new data.
  • If you select Append file using file modified time, we will upsert your files using surrogate primary keys _file, _line, and _modified. You can track the full history of a file or set of files and your files will have a combination of old and new data or data that is updated periodically.
  • If you select Upsert file using custom primary key, you can keep the most recent version of every record and your files will have a combination of the old and new data or data that is updated periodically. You can choose the primary keys you want to use after you save and test. For more information, see our documentation.
    You can modify the primary keys only if your initial sync fails. If your initial sync is successful, the option to modify the primary keys is not available.

Additional options

• Error Handling - Use the error handling option to choose how to handle errors in your files. If you know that your files contain some errors, you can choose to skip poorly formatted lines.

  • If you select skip, we ignore improperly formatted data within a file, allowing you to sync only valid data.

  • If you select fail, we fail the sync with an error on finding any improperly formatted data.

  We recommend that you select fail unless you are sure that you have undesirable, malformed data.

  You will receive a notification on your Fivetran dashboard if we encounter errors.

Finish Fivetran configuration

Click Save & Test. Fivetran will take it from here and sync your data from your SharePoint account.

Fivetran tests and validates the SharePoint connection. On successful completion of the setup tests, you can sync your SharePoint data to your destination.

Setup tests

Depending on your sync strategy, Fivetran performs the following SharePoint connection tests:

• (Magic Folder Mode) The Validating Shared URL from SharePoint test validates if we have access to the folder URL of the SharePoint account you specified in the setup form.

• (Merge Mode) The Connecting to API test verifies whether Fivetran successfully access the SharePoint folders. We perform this test only if your connection is configured.

• (Merge Mode) The Validating File Pattern test validates the file pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the File Pattern field.

• (Merge Mode) The Validating Archive Pattern test validates the archive pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the Archive Folder Pattern field.

• (Merge Mode) The Validating EscapeChar test validates the escape character you specified for your CSV files and checks the length of the character which must not be more than one. We perform this test only if you specify an escape character in the Escape Character field.

• (Merge Mode) The Multi-Character Delimiter Support test validates the length of the delimiter which must be within 15 characters. We perform this test only if you specify the delimiter for your CSV files in the Delimiter field.

• (Merge Mode) The Finding Matching Files test checks if the connection can successfully retrieve a minimum of one sample file and a maximum of ten sample files based on the configuration you specified in the setup form.

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