Integrate Dify with Live Jira 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 Jira data. You can list catalogs, explore schemas, and query records from Jira data using natural language prompts, with all data access running securely against authorized sources.
This article explains how to configure Jira 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 Jira data from Dify.
About Jira Data Integration
CData simplifies access and integration of live Jira data. Our customers leverage CData connectivity to:
- Gain bi-directional access to their Jira objects like issues, projects, and workflows.
- Use SQL stored procedures to perform functional actions like changing issues status, creating custom fields, download or uploading an attachment, modifying or retrieving time tracking settings, and more.
- Authenticate securely using a variety of methods, including username and password, OAuth, personal access token, API token, Crowd or OKTA SSO, LDAP, and more.
Most users leverage CData solutions to integrate Jira data with their database or data warehouse, whether that's using CData Sync directly or relying on CData's compatibility with platforms like SSIS or Azure Data Factory. Others are looking to get analytics and reporting on live Jira data from preferred analytics tools like Tableau and Power BI.
Learn more about how customers are seamlessly connecting to their Jira data to solve business problems from our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.
Getting Started
Step 1: Configure Jira connectivity for Dify
Connectivity to Jira from Dify is made possible through Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Jira data from Dify, start by creating and configuring a Jira connection in Connect AI.
- Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
- Select Jira from the Add Connection panel
-
Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Jira.
To connect to JIRA, provide the User and Password. Additionally, provide the Url; for example, https://yoursitename.atlassian.net.
- Click Save & Test
- 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.
- Click the gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open Settings
- On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT
- Give the PAT a descriptive name and click Create
- Copy the token when displayed and store it securely. It will not be shown again
With the Jira connection configured and a PAT generated, Dify can now connect to Jira 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.
- Log into Dify, or open your self-hosted Dify instance (version 1.6.0 or later, which includes built-in MCP support)
- Navigate to the Integrations page, select Tools and click MCP tab
-
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.
-
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 Jira data from Dify
With the integration complete, build an agent application in Dify and interact with live Jira data through natural language prompts.
-
From the Dify Studio page, click Create from Blank and select Agent as the application type
-
In the agent configuration, click Add under the Tools section and select the Connect AI MCP tools registered in Step 2
- Select an LLM provider and model for the agent so it can interpret prompts and call MCP tools
-
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 Jira
- Query the top 5 records from a table in Jira
-
The Dify agent calls the Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from Jira data
At this point, Dify communicates with the Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live Jira data through remote MCP tools directly from your agentic workflows.
Get started with CData Connect AI
To access hundreds of SaaS, big data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today. Download a free 14-day trial of CData Connect AI, and our Support Team is available to help with any questions you have.