Integrate Dify with Live Okta Data via CData Connect AI

Anusha M B
Anusha M B
Technical Marketing Engineer
Use the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to enable Dify agents and workflows to securely access and query live Okta data.

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 Okta data. You can list catalogs, explore schemas, and query records from Okta data using natural language prompts, with all data access running securely against authorized sources.

This article explains how to configure Okta 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 Okta data from Dify.

Step 1: Configure Okta connectivity for Dify

Connectivity to Okta from Dify is made possible through Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Okta data from Dify, start by creating and configuring a Okta connection in Connect AI.

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

    To connect to Okta, set the Domain connection string property to your Okta domain.

    You will use OAuth to authenticate with Okta, so you need to create a custom OAuth application.

    Creating a Custom OAuth Application

    From your Okta account:

    1. Sign in to your Okta developer edition organization with your administrator account.
    2. In the Admin Console, go to Applications > Applications.
    3. Click Create App Integration.
    4. For the Sign-in method, select OIDC - OpenID Connect.
    5. For Application type, choose Web Application.
    6. Enter a name for your custom application.
    7. Set the Grant Type to Authorization Code. If you want the token to be automatically refreshed, also check Refresh Token.
    8. Set the callback URL:
      • For desktop applications and headless machines, use http://localhost:33333 or another port number of your choice. The URI you set here becomes the CallbackURL property.
      • For web applications, set the callback URL to a trusted redirect URL. This URL is the web location the user returns to with the token that verifies that your application has been granted access.
    9. In the Assignments section, either select Limit access to selected groups and add a group, or skip group assignment for now.
    10. Save the OAuth application.
    11. The application's Client Id and Client Secret are displayed on the application's General tab. Record these for future use. You will use the Client Id to set the OAuthClientId and the Client Secret to set the OAuthClientSecret.
    12. Check the Assignments tab to confirm that all users who must access the application are assigned to the application.
    13. On the Okta API Scopes tab, select the scopes you wish to grant to the OAuth application. These scopes determine the data that the app has permission to read, so a scope for a particular view must be granted for the driver to have permission to query that view. To confirm the scopes required for each view, see the view-specific pages in Data Model < Views in the Help documentation.
    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab and update user-based permissions
    6. Updating 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.

  1. Click the gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open Settings
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT
  3. Give the PAT a descriptive name and click Create
    4. Creating a new PAT
  4. Copy the token when displayed and store it securely. It will not be shown again

With the Okta connection configured and a PAT generated, Dify can now connect to Okta 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.

  1. Log into Dify, or open your self-hosted Dify instance (version 1.6.0 or later, which includes built-in MCP support)
  2. Navigate to the Integrations page, select Tools and click MCP tab
    3. Navigate to MCP
  3. 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.

  4. Click Add & Authorize. Dify connects to the Connect AI MCP Server and lists the available tools Adding the Connect AI MCP Server in Dify

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 Okta data from Dify

With the integration complete, build an agent application in Dify and interact with live Okta data through natural language prompts.

  1. From the Dify Studio page, click Create from Blank and select Agent as the application type Viewing the Connect AI MCP tools in Dify
  2. In the agent configuration, click Add under the Tools section and select the Connect AI MCP tools registered in Step 2 Adding the Connect AI MCP tools to a Dify agent
  3. Select an LLM provider and model for the agent so it can interpret prompts and call MCP tools
  4. 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 Okta
    • Query the top 5 records from a table in Okta
  5. The Dify agent calls the Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from Okta data Querying live data from a Dify agent

At this point, Dify communicates with the Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live Okta data through remote MCP tools directly from your agentic workflows.

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