How to Query Live Billsby Data in Claude Desktop

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an emerging, open-source standard for connecting LLMs with external services and data sources. Through MCP Servers, AI clients can perform actions like opening Jira tickets, posting Slack messages, committing GitHub branches and more. With CData MCP Server, these capabilities expand exponentially.

CData MCP Server provides schema-aware context to AI tools — whether you're using it for AI-assisted code generation in IDEs like Cursor, or for querying live data through chat interfaces like Claude Desktop.

In this article, we guide the reader through installing CData API Driver for MCP Server, configuring the connection to Billsby, and asking questions of the data in Claude Desktop.

Prerequisites

You need to download Claude Desktop (download) and create an account before continuing.

Overview

Here's a quick overview of the steps:

1. Download and install the CData API Driver for MCP Server
2. Configure the connection to Billsby
3. Ask questions about the data in Claude Desktop

Step 1: Download and install CData MCP Server

1. To begin, navigate to https://www.cdata.com/solutions/codeassist/ and download the CData API Driver for MCP Server.
2. Find and double-click the installer to begin the installation.
3. Follow the prompts to complete the installation.

When the installation is complete, you are ready to configure MCP Server by connecting to Billsby.

Step 2: Configure the connection to Billsby

1. After installation, the MCP Server configuration wizard should open automatically.

   NOTE: If the wizard does not open automatically, search for "CData MCP Server" in the Windows search bar and double-click the application.

2. Click the dropdown menu in MCP Configuration > Configuration Name and select ""
3. Name the configuration (e.g. "cdataapi") and click "OK."

   NOTE: This name is used as the name for the MCP server and as the prefix for all of the MCP Server's tools.

   

4. Connecting to Billsby

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the Billsby Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\Billsby.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for Billsby (see below).

   Billsby API Profile Settings

   Retrieve your API Key from the Billsby control panel under Settings > Configuration > API keys and webhooks. Your domain is the subdomain from your Billsby account URL.

   Enter the appropriate connection properties in the configuration wizard.

   
5. Click "Connect" to authenticate with Billsby.
6. Finally, click "Save Configuration" to save the configuration.

   NOTE: This saves the configuration details to a separate file and updates the Claude Desktop configuration file (claude_desktop_config.json) to start MCP Server when the Claude Desktop client starts.

With MCP Server configured, you are ready to start asking questions of your live data from Claude.

Step 3: Ask AI for answers from live Billsby data

Now that we have installed MCP Server and configured a connection, we are ready to start with Billsby data in Claude Desktop.

1. Open Claude Desktop. It may take a moment for MCP Server to start, but you will see the list of servers and tools available in the Claude interface (look for the settings icon below the prompt bar).

   You can individually enable and disable specific tools by clicking on the server name.

2. Now that you have connected, you can ask Claude questions about the Billsby data. For example: "Can you give me a quantitative analysis about my closed-won opportunities by industry?"

   NOTE: Claude may need to explore the Billsby data to make sense of it before it can begin answering questions of the data. The tabular model presented by CData alongside the database tools available simplify the data exploration and analysis for an LLM.

   

Build with MCP Server. Deploy with CData Drivers.

Download MCP Server for free and give your AI tools schema-aware access to live Billsby data during development. When you're ready to move to production, CData Billsby Drivers deliver the same SQL-based access with enterprise-grade performance, security, and reliability.

Visit the CData Community to share insights, ask questions, and explore what's possible with MCP-powered AI workflows.