Use the CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity in MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is an analytics and mobility platform that enables data-driven innovation. When you pair MicroStrategy with the CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity, you gain database-like access to live Paylocity data from MicroStrategy, expanding your reporting and analytics capabilities. In this article, we walk through creating a database instance for Paylocity in MicroStrategy Developer and creating a Warehouse Catalog based on Paylocity data.

The CData ODBC driver offers unmatched performance for interacting with live Paylocity data in MicroStrategy due to optimized data processing built into the driver. When you issue complex SQL queries from MicroStrategy to Paylocity, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to Paylocity and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations (often SQL functions and JOIN operations) client-side. With built-in dynamic metadata querying, you can visualize and analyze Paylocity data using native MicroStrategy data types.

Connect to Paylocity as an ODBC Data Source

Information for connecting to Paylocity follows, along with different instructions for configuring a DSN in Windows and Linux environments (the ODBC Driver for Paylocity must be installed on the machine hosting the connected MicroStrategy Intelligence Server).

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.

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Windows

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Linux

If you are installing the CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity in a Linux environment, the driver installation predefines a system DSN. You can modify the DSN by editing the system data sources file (/etc/odbc.ini) and defining the required connection properties.

/etc/odbc.ini

[CData Paylocity Sys]
Driver = CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity
Description = My Description
OAuthClientID = YourClientId
OAuthClientSecret = YourClientSecret
RSAPublicKey = YourRSAPubKey
Key = YourKey
IV = YourIV
InitiateOAuth = GETANDREFRESH

For specific information on using these configuration files, please refer to the help documentation (installed and found online).

Create a Paylocity Database Instance in MicroStrategy Developer

You can connect to Paylocity in MicroStrategy Developer by adding a database instance based on the CData ODBC Driver for Paylocity.^*

1. Open MicroStrategy Developer and select a Project Source.
2. Navigate to Administration -> Configuration Managers -> Database Instances and right-click to add a new instance.
3. Name the instance, select Generic DBMS as the database connection type, and create a new database connection.
4. In the database connection wizard, name the connection and create a new Database Login name, using filler values for the user and password. 👁 Create a new database login.
   
5. Select the DSN that you configured earlier as the ODBC data source (i.e., CData Paylocity Sys). 👁 Choosing the DSN for the database connection.
   
6. Select the newly created database connection.
👁 The configured database instance.

7. In the Project Source, right-click the project and open the Project configuration.
8. Navigate to Database Instances and select the newly created database instance. 👁 Adding the new database instance to the project.
   
9. Close MicroStrategy Developer and restart the connected MicroStrategy Intelligence Server to complete the database instance creation.

With the database instance configured, you will now be able to connect to Paylocity data from the Warehouse Catalog and Data Import.

Connect to Paylocity Data from the Warehouse Catalog

Once you have created a database instance based on the ODBC Driver for Paylocity, you can connect to data from the Warehouse Catalog.

1. Select your project and click Schema -> Warehouse Catalog. 👁 Creating the Warehouse Catalog
   
2. In the Read Settings for the Catalog, click Settings and set the queries to retrieve the schema:
   • To retrieve the list of tables, use the following query:

     SELECT 
      CatalogName NAME_SPACE,
      TableName TAB_NAME 
     FROM 
      SYS_TABLES
      

   • To retrieve the list of columns for selected tables, use the following query:

     SELECT DISTINCT 
      CatalogName NAME_SPACE, 
      TableName TAB_NAME, 
      ColumnName COL_NAME, 
      DataTypeName DATA_TYPE, 
      Length DATA_LEN, 
      NumericPrecision DATA_PREC, 
      NumericScale DATA_SCALE 
     FROM 
      SYS_TABLECOLUMNS 
     WHERE 
      TableName IN (#TABLE_LIST#) 
     ORDER BY
      1,2,3
      

   👁 Custom metadata queries.
   
3. Select tables to be used in the project. 👁 Selecting tables to be used in the project.
   

If you are interested in connecting to Paylocity from other MicroStrategy products, you can read about connecting from MicroStrategy Web and connecting from MicroStrategy Desktop.

Note: connecting using a ODBC driver requires a 3- or 4-tier architecture.