Build Paylocity-Connected Apps in Mendix

Mendix is a high-productivity app platform that allows you to build and maintain both mobile and web applications at-scale. When paired with CData Connect AI, Mendix provides instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Paylocity data for applications. This article demonstrates how to connect to a CData Connect AI data source from within Mendix.

CData Connect AI provides a pure cloud-to-cloud interface for Paylocity, allowing you to import data from live Paylocity data in Mendix — without replicating the data to a natively supported database. As you build web and mobile applications from within Mendix, CData Connect AI pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc.) directly to Paylocity, leveraging server-side processing to return the requested Paylocity data quickly.

Configure Paylocity Connectivity for Mendix

To work with Paylocity data from Mendix, we need to connect to Paylocity from Connect AI, provide user access to the connection, and create a Workspace for the Paylocity data.

Connect to Paylocity from Connect AI

CData Connect AI uses a straightforward, point-and-click interface to connect to data sources.

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.

Configure Paylocity Endpoints for Mendix

After connecting to Paylocity, create a workspace for your desired table(s).

1. Navigate to the Workspaces page and click Add to create a new Workspace (or select an existing workspace). 👁 The Workspaces page.
   👁 Adding a new Workspace.
   
2. Click Add to add new assets to the Workspace.
3. Select the Paylocity connection (e.g. Paylocity1) and click Next. 👁 Selecting an Asset (Salesforce is shown).
   
4. Select the table(s) you wish to work with and click Confirm. 👁 Selecting Tables (Salesforce is shown).
   
5. Make note of the OData Service URL for your workspace, e.g. https://cloud.cdata.com/api/odata/{workspace_name}

With the connection, PAT, and Workspace configured, you are ready to connect to Paylocity data from Mendix.

Build a Paylocity-Connected App

Downloading the OData Metadata File

When creating a connection in Mendix, the connection flow requires a Data Source Contract File. Follow these steps to download the OData metadata file for CData Connect AI using curl, a command line tool:

1. Open a command-line window for your operating system. On Windows, open the start menu, type cmd, and press the Enter key to open a command prompt. On macOS and Linux, open a Terminal window.
2. To check if curl is installed on your system, type curl -help and press the enter key. If it is not installed, install it from the curl website.
3. Issue the following curl command, replacing USER with your CData Connect AI username and PAT with the PAT you generated above:

   curl -u USER:PAT https://cloud.cdata.com/api/odata/{workspace_name}/$metadata -o metadata.xml

4. Locate the metadata.xml file that the curl command created and move it to an accessible location.

Connecting to CData Connect AI in Mendix

Follow these steps to establish a connection from Mendix to CData Connect AI:

1. Login to Mendix and open the Data Hub page.
👁 Mendix landing page

2. In the Register a Data Source section, select OData.
👁 Registering an OData data source

3. Upload the metadata.xml file from the steps above and click Next.
👁 Uploading metadata file

4. Enter your desired values for Data Source Name and Data Source Version. In the Data Source Relative Path field, enter /api/odata/{workspace_name} and click Next.
👁 Creating the data source

5. On the Application information page, click Register a new application.
👁 Register new app

6. Enter a name in Application Name and select a technical owner (by default, this is the user who is currently logged in).
👁 Filling in fields for the app

7. Click Next. In the Environment Name field, enter a desired name (for example, CData Connect AI). In the Environment Location field, enter https://cloud.cdata.com and select the appropriate Environment Type (e.g. Production), depending on what is needed.
👁 Creating the environment

8. Click Done! to create your connection.
👁 Finalizing the connection

You can now use your connection in Mendix Studio Pro to easily create applications with access to live Paylocity data.

Get CData Connect AI

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