Integrate Active Directory Data into Automated Tasks with Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate is an online service that automates events (known as workflows) across the most common apps and services. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Active Directory data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Automate and integrate live Active Directory data into your workflows and tasks.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Active Directory, allowing you to easily integrate with live Active Directory data in Power Automate — without replicating the data. CData Connect AI looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Automate and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Active Directory, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Active Directory data.

Configure Active Directory Connectivity for Power Automate

Connectivity to Active Directory from Power Automate is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Active Directory data from Power Automate, we start by creating and configuring a Active Directory connection.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a Connection

2. Select "Active Directory" from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting a data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Active Directory.

   To establish a connection, set the following properties:

   • Valid User and Password credentials (e.g., Domain\BobF or cn=Bob F,ou=Employees,dc=Domain).
   • Server information, including the IP or host name of the Server, as well as the Port.

   • BaseDN: This will limit the scope of LDAP searches to the height of the distinguished name provided.

     Note: Specifying a narrow BaseDN may greatly increase performance; for example, cn=users,dc=domain will only return results contained within cn=users and its children.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Active Directory Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. 👁 Creating a new PAT
   
4. The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Active Directory data from Power Automate.

Connecting to CData Connect AI

To use Connect AI to integrate Active Directory data into your Power Automate tasks, you need a new SQL Server connection:

1. Log in to Power Automate
2. Click Data -> Connections -> New connection
3. Select SQL Server 👁 Creating a new SQL Server Connection
   
4. In the connection wizard:
   
   
   • Choose to connect directly
   • Set SQL server name to tds.cdata.com,14333
   • Set SQL database name to the name of the Active Directory connection (e.g. ActiveDirectory1)
   • Set Username to a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
   • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
   • Click Create 👁 Connecting to Connect AI
     

Integrating Active Directory Data into Power Automate Tasks

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to integrate live Active Directory data into your Power Automate tasks.

1. Log in to Power Automate
2. Click My flows -> New flow and choose to create the flow from blank or template
3. Add (or configure) a SQL Server action (like Get rows) and configure the action to connect to your Connect AI connection
4. Select a Table to work with (from the drop-down menu) and configure any advanced options (like filters, orders, etc) 👁 Getting Active Directory "Rows"
   
5. Configure any actions to follow and test, then save the flow

SQL Access to Active Directory Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Active Directory data from Power Automate tasks. You can create more connections and workflows to drive business — all without replicating Active Directory data.

To get SQL data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.

Related Power Automate Articles

This article explains how to use CData Connect AI with Power Automate (Online). Check out our other articles for more ways to work with Power Automate Desktop:

• Active Directory Data in Power Automate Desktop using CData Connect
• Active Directory Data in Power Automate Desktop via ODBC