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Get the Report →Build Paylocity Visualizations in Tableau Desktop
Use CData Connect Cloud to connect to live Paylocity data and build visualizations in Tableau.
Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way businesses use data to solve problems. When paired with CData Connect Cloud, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Paylocity data for visualizations, dashboards, and more. This article shows how to connect to Paylocity and build visualizations from Paylocity data in Tableau.
CData Connect Cloud provides a pure SQL Server, cloud-to-cloud interface for Paylocity, allowing you to easily build visualizations from live Paylocity data in Tableau without installing connectors. As you build visualizations, Tableau generates SQL queries to gather data. Using optimized data processing out of the box, CData Connect Cloud pushes all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Paylocity, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Paylocity data.
Configure Paylocity Connectivity for Tableau
Connectivity to Paylocity from Tableau is made possible through CData Connect Cloud. To work with Paylocity data from Tableau, we start by creating and configuring a Paylocity connection.
- Log into Connect Cloud, click Connections and click Add Connection
- Select "Paylocity" from the Add Connection panel
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Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Paylocity.
Set the following to establish a connection to Paylocity:
- RSAPublicKey: Set this to the RSA Key associated with your Paylocity, if the RSA Encryption is enabled in the Paylocity account.
This property is required for executing Insert and Update statements, and it is not required if the feature is disabled.
- UseSandbox: Set to true if you are using sandbox account.
- CustomFieldsCategory: Set this to the Customfields category. This is required when IncludeCustomFields is set to true. The default value for this property is PayrollAndHR.
- Key: The AES symmetric key(base 64 encoded) encrypted with the Paylocity Public Key. It is the key used to encrypt the content.
Paylocity will decrypt the AES key using RSA decryption.
It is an optional property if the IV value not provided, The driver will generate a key internally. - IV: The AES IV (base 64 encoded) used when encrypting the content. It is an optional property if the Key value not provided, The driver will generate an IV internally.
Connect Using OAuth Authentication
You must use OAuth to authenticate with Paylocity. OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Paylocity using the browser. For more information, refer to the OAuth section in the Help documentation.
The Pay Entry API
The Pay Entry API is completely separate from the rest of the Paylocity API. It uses a separate Client ID and Secret, and must be explicitly requested from Paylocity for access to be granted for an account. The Pay Entry API allows you to automatically submit payroll information for individual employees, and little else. Due to the extremely limited nature of what is offered by the Pay Entry API, we have elected not to give it a separate schema, but it may be enabled via the UsePayEntryAPI connection property.
Please be aware that when setting UsePayEntryAPI to true, you may only use the CreatePayEntryImportBatch & MergePayEntryImportBatchgtable stored procedures, the InputTimeEntry table, and the OAuth stored procedures. Attempts to use other features of the product will result in an error. You must also store your OAuthAccessToken separately, which often means setting a different OAuthSettingsLocation when using this connection property.
- RSAPublicKey: Set this to the RSA Key associated with your Paylocity, if the RSA Encryption is enabled in the Paylocity account.
- Click Create & Test
- Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Paylocity Connection page and update the User-based permissions.
Add a Personal Access Token
If you are connecting from a service, application, platform, or framework that does not support OAuth authentication, you can create a Personal Access Token (PAT) to use for authentication. Best practices would dictate that you create a separate PAT for each service, to maintain granularity of access.
- Click on your username at the top right of the Connect Cloud app and click User Profile.
- On the User Profile page, scroll down to the Personal Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
- Give your 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, you are ready to connect to Paylocity data from Tableau.
Visualize Live Paylocity Data in Tableau
To establish a connection from Tableau Desktop to the CData Connect Cloud Virtual SQL Server API, follow these steps.
- In Tableau Desktop, open a new book. Under To a Server, select More, then Microsoft SQL Server.
- Enter your credentials:
- Server: enter the Virtual SQL Server endpoint and port separated by a comma: tds.cdata.com,14333
- Database: enter the Connection Name of the CData Connect Cloud data source you want to connect to (for example, Paylocity1).
- Authentication: select Use a specific username and password.
- Username: enter your CData Connect Cloud username. This is displayed in the top-right corner of the CData Connect Cloud interface. For example, [email protected].
- Password: enter the PAT you previously generated.
- Require SSL: leave this selected.
- Click Sign In.
- Select the Database (Connect Cloud connection) you wish to work with and opt for a Live or Extract Connection type.
- Select the table(s) you wish to visualize. If you select multiple tables, define the relationship between the tables using the appropriate columns.
- Select the fields to visualize.
Real-Time Access to Paylocity Data from Data Applications
At this point, you have a direct, cloud-to-cloud connection to live Paylocity data from your Tableau workbook. You can create new visualizations, build dashboards, and more. For more information on gaining live access to data from more than 100 SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources from applications like Tableau, refer to our Connect Cloud page.