How to Access Live PayPal Data in Power Automate Desktop via ODBC

Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism

The CData ODBC Driver for PayPal enables you to integrate PayPal data into workflows built using Microsoft Power Automate Desktop.

The CData ODBC Driver for PayPal enables you to access live PayPal data in workflow automation tools like Power Automate. This article shows how to integrate PayPal data into a simple workflow, moving PayPal data into a CSV file.

Through optimized data processing, CData ODBC Drivers offer unmatched performance for interacting with live PayPal data in Microsoft Power Automate. When you issue complex SQL queries from Power Automate to PayPal, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to PayPal and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (e.g. SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connect to PayPal as an ODBC Data Source

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.

The provider surfaces tables from two PayPal APIs. The APIs use different authentication methods.

The REST API uses the OAuth standard. To authenticate to the REST API, set the OAuthClientId, OAuthClientSecret, and CallbackURL properties.
The Classic API requires Signature API credentials. To authenticate to the Classic API, obtain an API username, password, and signature.

See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide to obtaining the necessary API credentials.

To select the API you want to work with, you can set the Schema property to REST or SOAP. By default the SOAP schema will be used.

For testing purposes you can set UseSandbox to true and use sandbox credentials.

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 workflows.

Integrate PayPal Data into Power Automate Workflows

After configuring the DSN for PayPal, you are ready to integrate PayPal data into your Power Automate workflows. Open Microsoft Power Automate, add a new flow, and name the flow.

👁 A new flow in Power Automate

In the flow editor, you can add the actions to connect to PayPal, query PayPal using SQL, and write the query results to a CSV document.

Add an Open SQL Connection Action

Add an "Open SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

Connection string: DSN=CData PayPal Source

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Open SQL connection' action

Add an Execute SQL Statement Action

Add an "Execute SQL statement" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

Get connection by: SQL connection variable
SQL connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)
SQL statement: SELECT * FROM Transactions

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Execute SQL statement' action

Add a Write to CSV File Action

Add a "Write to CSV file" action (Actions -> File) and configure the properties.

Variable to write to: %QueryResult% (the variable from the "Execute SQL statement" action above)
File path: set to a file on disk
Configure Advanced settings as needed.

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Write to CSV file' action

Add a Close SQL Connection Action

Add a "Close SQL connection" action (Actions -> Database) and configure the properties.

SQL Connection: %SQLConnection% (the variable from the "Open SQL connection" action above)

After configuring the action, click Save.

👁 A configured 'Close SQL connection' action

Save & Run the Flow

Once you have configured all the actions for the flow, click the disk icon to save the flow. Click the play icon to run the flow.

👁 A fully configured workflow

Now you have a workflow to move PayPal data into a CSV file.

👁 Application data in a CSV file (Salesforce is shown)

With the CData ODBC Driver for PayPal, you get live connectivity to PayPal data within your Microsoft Power Automate workflows.

URL: https://www.cdata.com/kb/tech/paypal-odbc-power-automate.rst