How to Connect Flowise AI Agents to Live Power BI XMLA Data via CData Connect AI

Flowise AI is an open-source, no-code tool for building AI workflows and custom agents visually. Its drag-and-drop interface allows you to integrate large language models (LLMs) with APIs, databases, and external systems effortlessly.

CData Connect AI enables real-time connectivity to hundreds of enterprise data sources. Through its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, CData Connect AI bridges Flowise agents with live Power BI XMLA securely and efficiently, no data replication required. By combining Flowise AI's intuitive agent builder with CData's MCP integration, users can create agents capable of fetching, analyzing, and acting upon live Power BI XMLA data directly within Flowise AI workflows.

This guide shows you how to connect Flowise AI to CData Connect AI MCP, set up credentials, and enable your agents to query live Power BI XMLA data in real time.

Step 1: Configure Power BI XMLA Connectivity for Flowise

Connectivity to Power BI XMLA from Flowise AI is made possible through CData Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Power BI XMLA data from Flowise AI, we start by creating and configuring a Power BI XMLA connection in CData Connect AI.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
👁 Adding a connection in Connect AI

2. Select Power BI XMLA from the Add Connection panel
👁 Selecting data source

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Power BI XMLA.

   By default, use Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) to connect to Microsoft Power BI XMLA. Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) is Microsoft's multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service. It is user-based authentication that requires that you set AuthScheme to EntraID (formerly AzureAD).

   For more information on other authentication schemes, refer to the Help documentation.

   👁 Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab and update user-based permissions
👁 Updating permissions

Once the connection is established, Power BI XMLA data is now accessible in CData Connect AI and ready to be used with MCP enabled tools.

Add a Personal Access Token

A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Flowise AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each integration to maintain granular access control.

1. Click the gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open Settings
2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT
3. Give the PAT a descriptive name and click Create
👁 Creating a new PAT

4. Copy the token when displayed and store it securely. It will not be shown again

With the Power BI XMLA connection configured and a PAT generated, Flowise AI can now connect to Power BI XMLA data through Connect AI.

Step 2: Configure Connect AI credentials in Flowise AI

Log in to Flowise AI workspace to set up the integration.

Add OpenAI credentials

1. Navigate to Credentials and choose Add Credential
👁 Click Add credential

2. Select OpenAI API from the dropdown
3. Provide a name (e.g., OpenAI_Key) and paste the API key
👁 Adding OpenAI credentials in Flowise

Add the PAT variable

1. Navigate to Variables and Add Variable
👁 Navigate to Variables

2. Set Variable Name (e.g., PAT), choose Static as type, and set the Value to Base64-encoded username:PAT
3. Click Add to save the variable
👁 Adding PAT as variable in Flowise

Step 3: Build the agent in Flowise AI

1. Go to Agent Flows, select Add New
👁 Agent Flow page

2. Click the "+" icon to add a new node and choose Agent and drag the agent to the workflow
👁 Adding agent node in Flowise

3. Connect the Start node to the Agent node
👁 Connecting agent nodes in Flowise

Configure agent settings

Double-click on the Agent node and fill in the details:

• Model: select ChatOpenAI or preferred model (e.g., gpt-4o-mini)
• Connect Credential: Select OpenAI API key credential which was created earlier
• Streaming: Enabled

👁 Fill in the details for Agent Node

Add the custom MCP tool

1. Under Tools, click Add Tool and choose Custom MCP
2. Fill in the JSON parameters as shown below:

 
{
 "url": "https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
 "headers": {
 "Authorization": "Basic {{$vars.PAT}}"
 }
}

👁 Configuring custom MCP tool in Flowise

Click the refresh icon to load available MCP actions. Once actions are listed, now Flowise agent is successfully connected to CData Connect AI MCP.

Step 4: Test and query live Power BI XMLA data in Flowise

1. Open the Chat tab in Flowise
2. Type a query such as "Show top 10 records from Power BI XMLA data table"
3. Observe that responses are fetched in real time via the CData Connect AI MCP connection
👁 Testing live queries in Flowise

With the workflow run completed, Flowise demonstrates successful retrieval of Salesforce data through the CData Connect AI MCP server, with the MCP Client node providing the ability to ask questions, retrieve records, and perform actions on the data.

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