Analyze Paylocity Data in Looker

Looker is a business intelligence and big data analytics platform that helps you explore, analyze and share real-time business analytics. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Paylocity data for business applications. This article shows how to connect to Paylocity in Connect AI and then connect to Paylocity data in Looker.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Paylocity, allowing you to build reports from live Paylocity data in Looker — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you create applications to work with data, Looker generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Paylocity, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return the requested Paylocity data.

Configure Paylocity Connectivity for Looker

Connectivity to Paylocity from Looker is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Paylocity data from Looker, 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
   

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 Paylocity data from Looker.

Connect to Paylocity in Looker

The steps below outline connecting to CData Connect AI from Looker to create a new Paylocity data source.

1. Log-in to Looker
2. In the navigation pane, select Admin. 👁 Selecting Admin
   
3. Under the Database category, select Connections. 👁 Selecting connections
   
4. On the Connections page, click Add Connection. 👁 Adding a new connection
   
5. Enter the connection settings:
   • Name: the name for the connection in models.
   • Dialect: select Microsoft SQL Server 2017+.
   • SSH Server: leave this disabled.
   • Remote Host:Port: enter tds.cdata.com in the first field and 14333 in the second field.
   • Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect AI data source you want to connect to (for example, QuickBooksOnline1).
   • Username: enter your CData Connect AI username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect AI interface. For example, [email protected]
   • Password: enter the PAT you generated on the Settings page
   Leave the rest of the connection settings at their default values unless you need to modify them. 👁 Configuring connection settings
   
6. At the bottom of the page, click Test These Settings to ensure that you can connect to CData Connect AI.
7. Click Add Connection to create the connection and return to the Connections page. 👁 New connection added.
   

Your connection is now available for use in Looker. To connect to additional data sources from your CData Connect AI account, repeat the setup steps above, changing the value for Database for each data source.

Creating A Looker Visualization From The SQL Runner and Explore Features

To create a visualization in Looker using the SQL Runner, follow these steps:

1. In the Looker interface, select Develop -> SQL Runner from the left navigation pane. 👁 Select SQL Runner.
   
2. On the SQL Runner interface, select the connection you made in the previous steps. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.
   
3. Now, click the gear symbol next to a table and then select Explore Table. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.
   
4. Next, on the left menu, select fields from the table and click Run. You can now expand the Visualization accordion, and see a bar chart, by default. 👁 Entering name for new dashboard.
   

   We have now created a visualization of Paylocity data in Looker using CData Connect AI!

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