Access Live Paylocity Data in Excel (Desktop) via Connect AI

Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet software application, primarily used for tasks related to data management, analysis, and visualization. When combined with CData Connect AI, you gain immediate access to Paylocity data directly within Excel, facilitating data analysis, collaboration, calculations, and more.This article shows how to connect to Paylocity in your Connect AI instance and access and update live Paylocity data in Excel spreadsheets.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Paylocity, allowing you to easily access live Paylocity data in Excel for the web. Simply use the Connect AI Add-In to query live data (or write your own). Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported query operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Paylocity, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Paylocity data.

Configure Paylocity Connectivity for Excel

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

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

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

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Paylocity.

   Set the following to establish a connection to Paylocity:

   • RSAPublicKey: Set this to the RSA Key associated with your Paylocity, if the RSA Encryption is enabled in the Paylocity account.

     This property is required for executing Insert and Update statements, and it is not required if the feature is disabled.

   • UseSandbox: Set to true if you are using sandbox account.
   • CustomFieldsCategory: Set this to the Customfields category. This is required when IncludeCustomFields is set to true. The default value for this property is PayrollAndHR.
   • Key: The AES symmetric key(base 64 encoded) encrypted with the Paylocity Public Key. It is the key used to encrypt the content.

     Paylocity will decrypt the AES key using RSA decryption.
     It is an optional property if the IV value not provided, The driver will generate a key internally.

   • IV: The AES IV (base 64 encoded) used when encrypting the content. It is an optional property if the Key value not provided, The driver will generate an IV internally.

   Connect Using OAuth Authentication

   You must use OAuth to authenticate with Paylocity. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Paylocity using the browser. For more information, refer to the OAuth section in the Help documentation.

   The Pay Entry API

   The Pay Entry API is completely separate from the rest of the Paylocity API. It uses a separate Client ID and Secret, and must be explicitly requested from Paylocity for access to be granted for an account. The Pay Entry API allows you to automatically submit payroll information for individual employees, and little else. Due to the extremely limited nature of what is offered by the Pay Entry API, we have elected not to give it a separate schema, but it may be enabled via the UsePayEntryAPI connection property.

   Please be aware that when setting UsePayEntryAPI to true, you may only use the CreatePayEntryImportBatch & MergePayEntryImportBatchgtable stored procedures, the InputTimeEntry table, and the OAuth stored procedures. Attempts to use other features of the product will result in an error. You must also store your OAuthAccessToken separately, which often means setting a different OAuthSettingsLocation when using this connection property. 👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   

4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Paylocity Connection page and update the User-based permissions. 👁 Updating permissions
   

With the connection configured, you are ready to connect to Paylocity data from Excel.

Access Live Paylocity Data in Excel

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Excel to access live Paylocity data.

1. Open Excel, create a new sheet (or open an existing one).
2. Click Insert and click Get Add-ins. (if you have already installed the Add-In, jump to step 4).
3. Search for CData Connect AI Add-In and install the Add-in. 👁 Install the Add-In
   
4. Click Data and open the CData Connect AI Add-In.
5. In the Add-In panel, click Authorize to authenticate with your CData Connect AI instance 👁 Authorizing the Add-In
   
6. In the CData Connect AI panel in Excel, click Import 👁 CData Connect AI panel in Excel
   
7. Choose a Connection (e.g. Paylocity1), Table (e.g. Employee), and Columns to import 👁 CData Connect AI panel in Excel
   
8. Optionally add Filters, Sorting, and a Limit 👁 Choosing a Connection, Table, and Columns
   
9. Click Execute to import the data 👁 Executing the Query
   

Update Paylocity Data from Excel

In addition to viewing Paylocity data in Excel, CData Connect AI also lets you update and delete Paylocity data. Begin by importing data (as described above).

1. Update any cell or cells with changes you want to push to Paylocity (your changes will be in red)
2. In the CData Connect AI Add-In panel, select Update
3. Optionally highlight the cell(s) you wish to update and select an update option ("Update All" or "Update Selected") 👁 Executing the update (Salesforce is shown).
   
4. Click Execute to push the updates to Paylocity, and a notification will appear when the update is complete

Live Access to Paylocity Data from Cloud Applications

Now, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Paylocity data from your Excel workbook. You can add more data to your workbook for calculations, aggregations, collaboration, and more.

👁 Imported data (Salesforce is shown)


Try CData Connect AI and get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications.