Use Claude to Talk to Your Harvest Data via CData Connect AI

Stanley Liu
Stanley Liu
Associate Technical Product Marketer
Leverage the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to enable Claude to securely answer questions and take actions on your Harvest data for you.

Claude is a family of advanced large language models (LLMs) built by Anthropic, an AI research company founded in 2021. These models power the Claude conversational assistant and developer tools.

CData Connect AI offers a dedicated cloud-to-cloud interface for connecting to Harvest data. The CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server enables secure communication between Claude and Harvest. This allows you to ask questions and take actions on your Harvest data using Claude, 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 Harvest. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Harvest data.

Step 1: Configure Harvest Connectivity for Claude

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
  2. Adding a Connection
  3. Select "Harvest" from the Add Connection panel
  4. Selecting a data source
  5. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Harvest.

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

    Harvest API Profile Settings

    To authenticate to Harvest, you can use either Token authentication or the OAuth standard. Use Basic authentication to connect to your own data. Use OAuth to allow other users to connect to their data.

    Using Token Authentication

    To use Token Authentication, set the APIKey to your Harvest Personal Access Token in the ProfileSettings connection property. In addition to APIKey, set your AccountId in ProfileSettings to connect.

    Using OAuth Authentication

    First, register an OAuth2 application with Harvest. The application can be created from the "Developers" section of Harvest ID.

    After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

    • ProfileSettings: Set your AccountId in ProfileSettings.
    • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
    • OAuthClientId: Set this to the client ID that you specified in your app settings.
    • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret that you specified in your app settings.
    • CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI that you specified in your app settings.
    • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to manage how the driver obtains and refreshes the OAuthAccessToken.
    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  6. Click Save & Test

Step 2: Connect Claude to CData Connect AI

Follow these steps to add a CData Connect AI connector in Claude:

  1. Sign in to Claude.ai or create a new account.
  2. Expand the left navigation menu.
  3. In the bottom-left corner, click your user name and select Settings from the menu. The Settings screen appears.
  4. In the Settings screen, click Connectors.
  5. Click the button to Browse Connectors.
  6. Search for "CData Connect AI" and click the listing. Adding CData Connect AI
  7. Click "Connect" and sign into your Connect AI account. Connecting to your Connect AI account
  8. After connecting, Claude opens a new chat.

Step 3: Explore Live Harvest Data with Claude

  1. You can now start exploring your data with natural language prompts. Claude outlines the steps it uses to retrieve data from the source in CData Connect AI. Refer to CData's prompt library for prompt ideas.
  2. Exploring data with Claude

NOTE: Claude's setup process is subject to change. Refer to Claude's documentation for the latest setup information.

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