Integrate Dify with Live Avalara AvaTax Data via CData Connect AI

Dify is an open source platform for building production-ready agentic workflows, chatbots, and other LLM applications. It includes built-in, two-way support for the model context protocol (MCP), allowing you to register remote MCP servers as tools in the platform to add external data sources and give your agents access to live data.

By integrating Dify with CData Connect AI through the built-in MCP Server, Dify gains governed, real-time access to live Avalara AvaTax data. You can list catalogs, explore schemas, and query records from Avalara AvaTax data using natural language prompts, with all data access running securely against authorized sources.

This article explains how to configure Avalara AvaTax connectivity in Connect AI, generate the required personal access token, register the Connect AI MCP Server as a tool in Dify, add it to an agent application, and verify the integration by querying live Avalara AvaTax data from Dify.

Step 1: Configure Avalara AvaTax connectivity for Dify

Connectivity to Avalara AvaTax from Dify is made possible through Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Avalara AvaTax data from Dify, start by creating and configuring a Avalara AvaTax connection in Connect AI.

1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select Avalara AvaTax from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Avalara AvaTax.

   The primary method for performing basic authentication is to provide your login credentials, as follows:

   • User: Set this to your username.
   • Password: Set this to your password.

   Optionally, if you are making use of a sandbox environment, set the following:

   • UseSandbox: Set this to true if you are authenticating with a sandbox account.

   Authenticating Using Account Number and License Key

   Alternatively, you can authenticate using your account number and license key. Connect to data using the following:

   • AccountId: Set this to your Account Id. The Account Id is listed in the upper right hand corner of the admin console.
   • LicenseKey: Set this to your Avalara Avatax license key. You can generate a license key by logging into Avalara Avatax as an account administrator and navigating to Settings -> Reset License Key.
   
4. Click Save & Test
5. Navigate to the Permissions tab and update user-based permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Dify. 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

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

With the Avalara AvaTax connection configured and a PAT generated, Dify can now connect to Avalara AvaTax data through Connect AI.

Step 2: Register the Connect AI MCP Server in Dify

Next, register the Connect AI Remote MCP Server as a tool in Dify so your agents and workflows can discover and call live data tools through Connect AI.

1. Log into Dify, or open your self-hosted Dify instance (version 1.6.0 or later, which includes built-in MCP support)
2. Navigate to the Integrations page, select Tools and click MCP tab

3. Click Add MCP Server (HTTP) and enter the following details:
   • Server URL: https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp
   • Name Icon: Give a descriptive name, for example, CData Connect AI
   • Server Identifier: A unique identifier, for example, cdata-connect-ai
   • Headers: Add an Authorization header with the value Basic your_base64_encoded_email_PAT

   Note: Dify will use Basic authentication with Connect AI. Combine your Connect AI user email and the PAT you created earlier in the format email:PAT, base64 encode the combined string, and prefix it with Basic.

4. Click Add & Authorize. Dify connects to the Connect AI MCP Server and lists the available tools

With the MCP server registered, the Connect AI tools are available to any agent application or workflow in your Dify workspace.

Step 3: Query live Avalara AvaTax data from Dify

With the integration complete, build an agent application in Dify and interact with live Avalara AvaTax data through natural language prompts.

1. From the Dify Studio page, click Create from Blank and select Agent as the application type
2. In the agent configuration, click Add under the Tools section and select the Connect AI MCP tools registered in Step 2
3. Select an LLM provider and model for the agent so it can interpret prompts and call MCP tools
4. In the preview panel, type a prompt in the chat input, for example:
   • Use the cdata-connect-ai tools to list all available catalogs
   • Show the available schemas and tables for Avalara AvaTax
   • Query the top 5 records from a table in Avalara AvaTax
5. The Dify agent calls the Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from Avalara AvaTax data

At this point, Dify communicates with the Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live Avalara AvaTax data through remote MCP tools directly from your agentic workflows.

Get started with CData Connect AI

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