Use Grok to Talk to Your Dynamics CRM Data via CData Connect AI
Grok AI is a large language model developed by xAI for real-time reasoning, tool invocation, and agentic workflows. It enables developers to build AI agents that can reason over live data, discover tools dynamically, and take intelligent actions.
CData Connect AI provides a secure cloud-to-cloud interface for integrating 350+ enterprise data sources with Grok AI. Using Connect AI, live Dynamics CRM data is exposed through a remote MCP endpoint without replication, allowing Grok AI agents to securely query and analyze governed enterprise data in real time.
About Dynamics CRM Data Integration
CData simplifies access and integration of live Microsoft Dynamics CRM data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:
- Read and write data in the Dynamics CRM 2011+ Services and Dynamics CRM Online.
- Extend the native features of Dynamics CRM with customizable caching and intelligent query aggregation and separation.
- Authenticate securely with Dynamics CRM 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.
CData customers use our Dynamics CRM 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 Dynamics CRMa 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 Dynamics CRM in CData Connect AI
To enable Grok to query live Dynamics CRM data, first create a Dynamics CRM connection in CData Connect AI. This connection is exposed through the CData Remote MCP Server.
-
Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection.
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Select "Dynamics CRM" from the Add Connection panel.
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Enter the required authentication properties.
The connection string options meet the authentication and connection requirements of different Dynamics CRM instances. To connect to your instance, set the User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, to valid Dynamics CRM user credentials and set the Url to a valid Dynamics CRM server organization root. Additionally, set the CRMVersion property to 'CRM2011+' or 'CRMOnline'. IFD configurations are supported as well; set InternetFacingDeployment to true.
Additionally, you can provide the security token service (STS) or AD FS endpoint in the STSURL property. This value can be retrieved with the GetSTSUrl stored procedure. Office 365 users can connect to the default STS URL by simply setting CRMVersion.
Click Create & Test.
-
Open the Permissions tab and configure user access.
Add a Personal Access Token
A Personal Access Token (PAT) authenticates MCP requests from Agno to CData Connect AI.
- Open Settings and navigate to Access Tokens.
- Click Create PAT.
-
Save the generated token securely.
Step 2: Install required dependencies
Remote MCP Tools allow Grok to connect to external MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, extending its capabilities with custom tools from third parties or your own implementations. Simply specify a server URL and optional configuration xAI manages the MCP server connection and interaction on your behalf.
Open the terminal and install the required dependencies for the MCP integration using pip.
pip install xai-sdk==1.4.0
The xai-sdk (v1.4.0) enables Remote MCP tools, and python-dotenv is used to securely load environment variables.
pip install python-dotenv
Step 3: Generate an xAI API key
- Create or login to xAI account
- Open xAI API console
- Navigate to API Keys
- Click on create API key
After generating an API key, user need to save it somewhere safe. Recommended option is to export it as an environment variable in your terminal or save it to a .env file.
Step 4: Connect to CData Connect AI
Initialize the Grok client and configure the MCP connection to CData Connect AI. The code below establishes a secure connection and sends a natural language query to your data source.
import os
from xai_sdk import Client
from xai_sdk.chat import user
from xai_sdk.tools import mcp
client = Client(api_key="Your_xAI-API_KEY")
chat = client.chat.create(
model="grok-4-1-fast-non-reasoning",
tools=[
mcp(
server_url="https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
extra_headers={"Authorization": "Basic Username:PAT"} #Base64 Encoded Username:PAT
)
],
include=["verbose_streaming"],
)
chat.append(user("List the top two catalogs for me please"))
is_thinking = True
for response, chunk in chat.stream():
# View the server-side tool calls as they are being made in real-time
for tool_call in chunk.tool_calls:
print(f"
Calling tool: {tool_call.function.name} with arguments: {tool_call.function.arguments}")
if response.usage.reasoning_tokens and is_thinking:
print(f"
Thinking... ({response.usage.reasoning_tokens} tokens)", end="", flush=True)
if chunk.content and is_thinking:
print("
Final Response:")
is_thinking = False
if chunk.content and not is_thinking:
print(chunk.content, end="", flush=True)
print("
Usage:")
print(response.usage)
print(response.server_side_tool_usage)
print("
Server Side Tool Calls:")
print(response.tool_calls)
This code initializes the Grok AI client, connects to CData Connect AI via MCP using Basic Authentication, and streams the response in real-time. The agent automatically discovers available tools, invokes them to query your live data, and displays both the tool calls and final results.
Run the script to see Grok query your connected data source.
Query Results
The output shows Grok invoking MCP tools through CData Connect AI and returning live data from your connected source.
User can now query live data using natural language through Grok AI.
Build agentic workflows with Grok and CData Connect AI
Combining Grok AI with CData Connect AI delivers AI-powered data access without pipelines or custom integrations. Start your free trial today to see how CData can empower Grok with live, secure access to 350+ external systems.