How to Connect Flowise AI Agents to Live Paylocity Data via CData Connect AI

Flowise AI is an open-source, no-code tool for building AI workflows and custom agents visually. Its drag-and-drop interface allows you to integrate large language models (LLMs) with APIs, databases, and external systems effortlessly.

CData Connect AI enables real-time connectivity to hundreds of enterprise data sources. Through its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, CData Connect AI bridges Flowise agents with live Paylocity securely and efficiently, no data replication required. By combining Flowise AI's intuitive agent builder with CData's MCP integration, users can create agents capable of fetching, analyzing, and acting upon live Paylocity data directly within Flowise AI workflows.

This guide shows you how to connect Flowise AI to CData Connect AI MCP, set up credentials, and enable your agents to query live Paylocity data in real time.

Step 1: Configure Paylocity Connectivity for Flowise

Connectivity to Paylocity from Flowise AI is made possible through CData Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Paylocity data from Flowise AI, we start by creating and configuring a Paylocity connection in CData Connect AI.

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

2. Select Paylocity from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting 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 and update user-based permissions
👁 Updating permissions

Once the connection is established, Paylocity data is now accessible in CData Connect AI and ready to be used with MCP enabled tools.

Add a Personal Access Token

A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Flowise AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each integration to maintain granular access control.

1. Click the gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open Settings
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT
3. Give the PAT a descriptive name and click Create
👁 Creating a new PAT

4. Copy the token when displayed and store it securely. It will not be shown again

With the Paylocity connection configured and a PAT generated, Flowise AI can now connect to Paylocity data through Connect AI.

Step 2: Configure Connect AI credentials in Flowise AI

Log in to Flowise AI workspace to set up the integration.

Add OpenAI credentials

1. Navigate to Credentials and choose Add Credential
👁 Click Add credential

2. Select OpenAI API from the dropdown
3. Provide a name (e.g., OpenAI_Key) and paste the API key
👁 Adding OpenAI credentials in Flowise

Add the PAT variable

1. Navigate to Variables and Add Variable
👁 Navigate to Variables

2. Set Variable Name (e.g., PAT), choose Static as type, and set the Value to Base64-encoded username:PAT
3. Click Add to save the variable
👁 Adding PAT as variable in Flowise

Step 3: Build the agent in Flowise AI

1. Go to Agent Flows, select Add New
👁 Agent Flow page

2. Click the "+" icon to add a new node and choose Agent and drag the agent to the workflow
👁 Adding agent node in Flowise

3. Connect the Start node to the Agent node
👁 Connecting agent nodes in Flowise

Configure agent settings

Double-click on the Agent node and fill in the details:

• Model: select ChatOpenAI or preferred model (e.g., gpt-4o-mini)
• Connect Credential: Select OpenAI API key credential which was created earlier
• Streaming: Enabled

👁 Fill in the details for Agent Node

Add the custom MCP tool

1. Under Tools, click Add Tool and choose Custom MCP
2. Fill in the JSON parameters as shown below:

 
{
 "url": "https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
 "headers": {
 "Authorization": "Basic {{$vars.PAT}}"
 }
}

👁 Configuring custom MCP tool in Flowise

Click the refresh icon to load available MCP actions. Once actions are listed, now Flowise agent is successfully connected to CData Connect AI MCP.

Step 4: Test and query live Paylocity data in Flowise

1. Open the Chat tab in Flowise
2. Type a query such as "Show top 10 records from Paylocity data table"
3. Observe that responses are fetched in real time via the CData Connect AI MCP connection
👁 Testing live queries in Flowise

With the workflow run completed, Flowise demonstrates successful retrieval of Salesforce data through the CData Connect AI MCP server, with the MCP Client node providing the ability to ask questions, retrieve records, and perform actions on the data.

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