How to Connect to Live Microsoft Dataverse Data from Gemini CLI (via CData Connect AI)

Jerod Johnson
Senior Technology Evangelist

Leverage the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to enable Gemini CLI to securely read and take actions on your Microsoft Dataverse data for you.

Gemini CLI is a command-line interface tool that provides direct access to Google's Gemini AI models for code generation, text analysis, and conversational AI capabilities. When combined with CData Connect AI Remote MCP, you can leverage Gemini CLI to interact with your Microsoft Dataverse data in real-time through natural language queries. This article outlines the process of connecting to Microsoft Dataverse using Connect AI Remote MCP and configuring Gemini CLI to interact with your Microsoft Dataverse data.

CData Connect AI offers a dedicated cloud-to-cloud interface for connecting to Microsoft Dataverse data. The CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server enables secure communication between Gemini CLI and Microsoft Dataverse. This allows you to ask questions and take actions on your Microsoft Dataverse data using natural language through Gemini CLI, all without the need for data replication to a natively supported database. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect AI efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Microsoft Dataverse. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Microsoft Dataverse data.

In this article, we show how to configure Gemini CLI to conversationally explore (or Vibe Query) your data using natural language. With Connect AI you can query and interact with live Microsoft Dataverse data, plus hundreds of other sources.

About Microsoft Dataverse Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Microsoft Dataverse (formerly the Common Data Service). Customers use CData connectivity to:

Access both Dataverse Entities and Dataverse system tables to work with exactly the data they need.
Authenticate securely with Microsoft Dataverse in a variety of ways, including Azure Active Directory, Azure Managed Service Identity credentials, and Azure Service Principal using either a client secret or a certificate.
Use SQL stored procedures to manage Microsoft Dataverse entities - listing, creating, and removing associations between entities.

CData customers use our Dataverse connectivity solutions for a variety of reasons, whether they're looking to replicate their data into a data warehouse (alongside other data sources)or analyze live Dataverse data from their preferred data tools inside the Microsoft ecosystem (Power BI, Excel, etc.) or with external tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.).

Getting Started

Step 1: Configure Microsoft Dataverse Connectivity for Gemini CLI

Connectivity to Microsoft Dataverse from Gemini CLI is made possible through CData Connect AI Remote MCP. To interact with Microsoft Dataverse data from Gemini CLI, we start by creating and configuring a Microsoft Dataverse connection in CData Connect AI.

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

Select "Microsoft Dataverse" from the Add Connection panel

Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Microsoft Dataverse.
You can connect without setting any connection properties for your user credentials. Below are the minimum connection properties required to connect.
- InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
- OrganizationUrl: Set this to the organization URL you are connecting to, such as https://myorganization.crm.dynamics.com.
- Tenant (optional): Set this if you wish to authenticate to a different tenant than your default. This is required to work with an organization not on your default Tenant.
When you connect the Common Data Service OAuth endpoint opens in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions. The OAuth process completes automatically.
Click Save & Test
Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Microsoft Dataverse Connection page and update the User-based permissions.

Add a Personal Access Token

A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Gemini CLI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
Give the PAT a name and click Create.
The personal access token is only visible at creation, so be sure to copy it and store it securely for future use.

With the connection configured and a PAT generated, we are ready to connect to Microsoft Dataverse data from Gemini CLI.

Step 2: Configure Gemini CLI for CData Connect AI

Follow these steps to configure Gemini CLI to connect to CData Connect AI:

Ensure Gemini CLI is installed on your system. If not, install it using npm:
```
npm install -g @google-gemini/cli
```
Locate your Gemini CLI settings file. If the file doesn't exist, create it:
- Linux/Unix/Mac: ~/.gemini/settings.json
- Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.gemini\settings.json
Add the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to the mcpServers object in your settings file. Replace YOUR_EMAIL and YOUR_PAT with your Connect AI email address and the PAT created previously:
```
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cdata-connect-cloud": {
      "httpUrl": "https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Basic YOUR_EMAIL:YOUR_PAT"
      }
    }
  }
}    
```
For example, if your email is [email protected] and your PAT is Uu90pt5vEO..., the Authorization header would be:
```
"Authorization": "Basic [email protected]:Uu90pt5vEO..."
```
Save the settings file. Gemini CLI will now use the CData Connect AI MCP Server for data operations.

Step 3: Query Live Microsoft Dataverse Data with Natural Language

With Gemini CLI configured and connected to CData Connect AI, you can now interact with your Microsoft Dataverse data using natural language queries. The MCP integration allows you to ask questions and receive responses from the Microsoft Dataverse data source in real-time.

Start using Gemini CLI to explore your data:

Open your terminal and start a Gemini CLI session:
```
gemini
```
You can now use natural language to query your Microsoft Dataverse data. For example:
- "Show me all customers from the last 30 days"
- "What are my top performing products?"
- "Analyze sales trends for Q4"
- "List all active projects with their current status"
Gemini CLI will automatically translate your natural language queries into appropriate SQL queries and execute them against your Microsoft Dataverse data through the CData Connect AI MCP Server.

The combination of Gemini CLI's natural language processing capabilities and CData Connect AI's robust data connectivity enables you to explore and analyze your Microsoft Dataverse data without writing complex SQL queries or needing deep technical knowledge of the underlying data structure.

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