Use Manus AI to Talk to Your Paylocity Data via CData Connect AI

Manus AI is an autonomous AI agent platform that helps users accomplish complex tasks through natural language from browsing the web to executing code and interacting with external services. When combined with CData Connect AI remote MCP, users can leverage Manus AI to interact with their Paylocity data in real-time, without any data replication.

This article explains how to connect to Paylocity using the CData Connect AI MCP Server and configure Manus AI to conversationally explore (or Vibe Query) their Paylocity data. With Connect AI, users can build AI agents with access to live Paylocity data, plus hundreds of other sources.

Step 1: Configure Paylocity connectivity for Manus AI

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

1. Log into Connect AI, click Connections and 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)
   Click Save & Test

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

Add a Personal Access Token

A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Manus 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, we are ready to connect to Paylocity data from Manus AI.

Step 2: Get started with Manus AI

Navigate to Manus and sign in to your Manus AI account. Once logged in, you are ready to configure the CData Connect AI MCP Server as a custom connector.

Step 3: Add the CData Connect AI MCP Server as a connector

Manus AI supports connecting to external MCP servers via its Connectors settings. There are two methods to add the CData Connect AI MCP Server: Import by JSON or Direct Configuration. Both methods are explained below.

1. In Manus AI, click on the profile icon and navigate to Settings 👁 Navigating to Manus AI settings
   
2. Go to the Connectors section and click Add Connectors 👁 Navigating to Custom MCP connectors
   
3. Locate Custom MCP 👁 Click Custom MCP
   
4. Click Add custom MCP to select the configuration options 👁 Add custom MCP
   

Option A: Import by JSON

Use this method to quickly configure the MCP Server by pasting a JSON configuration snippet.

1. Select Import by JSON from the connector setup options.
2. Paste the following JSON into the configuration field, replacing the placeholder values with your Connect AI credentials:

   {
    "mcpServers": {
    "cdata-connect-ai": {
    "transport": "sse",
    "url": "https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
    "headers": {
    "Authorization": "Basic USER_NAME:YOUR_CONNECTAI_PAT;"
    }
    }
    }
   }
    

   Replace url with the Connect AI MCP URL, USER_NAME with your Connect AI email address, and YOUR_CONNECTAI_PAT with the Personal Access Token created in Step 1. 👁 Importing MCP configuration via JSON in Manus AI
   
3. Click Import to apply the configuration.

Option B: Direct Configuration

Use this method to manually enter the MCP Server connection properties through the Manus AI interface.

1. Select Direct Configuration from the connector setup options.
2. Fill in the following fields:
   • Server Name: CData Connect AI
   • Transport Type: HTTP
   • Server URL: https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp
   • Custom Headers: Add a header with the name Authorization and the value Basic Base64Encoded(username:pat), replacing the placeholder with your Base64-encoded Connect AI email and PAT combination.
   👁 Configuring the CData Connect AI MCP Server directly in Manus AI
   
3. Optionally, enter a Note to provide Manus AI with instructions on how and when to use this MCP connector.
4. Click Save to establish the connection to the CData Connect AI MCP Server. Once saved, the connector will appear as active in your Connectors list.

Step 4: Query your Paylocity data using natural language

With the CData Connect AI MCP configured in Manus AI, users can now interact with their Paylocity data using natural language in any new Manus AI chat session.

1. Open a new chat in Manus AI.
2. Start asking questions about the Paylocity data. For example:
   • Show me all customers from the last 30 days
   • What are my top performing products?
   • Analyze sales trends for Q4
   • List all active projects with their current status
3. Manus AI will use the CData Connect AI MCP Server to query your Paylocity data in real-time and provide responses based on live data. 👁 Chatting with live data in Manus AI
   

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