Integrate Live Sage 300 Data into Custom Business Apps Built in Power Apps

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Use CData Connect AI to connect to Sage 300 data and integrate live Sage 300 data into apps built in Microsoft Power Apps.

Power Apps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile — without the time and expense of custom software development. When paired with CData Connect AI, you get instant, cloud-to-cloud access to Sage 300 data from the apps you build using Power Apps. This article shows how to connect to Connect AI from Power Apps and build an app based on live Sage 300 data.

CData Connect AI provides a pure SQL, cloud-to-cloud interface for Sage 300, allowing you to easily integrate with live Sage 300 data in Power Apps — without replicating the data. CData Connect AI looks exactly like a SQL Server database to Power Apps and uses optimized data processing out of the box to push all supported SQL operations (filters, JOINs, etc) directly to Sage 300, leveraging server-side processing to quickly return Sage 300 data.

Configure Sage 300 Connectivity for Power Apps

Connectivity to Sage 300 from Power Apps is made possible through CData Connect AI. To work with Sage 300 data from Power Apps, we start by creating and configuring a Sage 300 connection.

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
    2. Adding a Connection
  2. Select "Sage 300" from the Add Connection panel
    3. Selecting a data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Sage 300.

    Sage 300 requires some initial setup in order to communicate over the Sage 300 Web API.

    • Set up the security groups for the Sage 300 user. Give the Sage 300 user access to the option under Security Groups (per each module required).
    • Edit both web.config files in the /Online/Web and /Online/WebApi folders; change the key AllowWebApiAccessForAdmin to true. Restart the webAPI app-pool for the settings to take.
    • Once the user access is configured, click https://server/Sage300WebApi/ to ensure access to the web API.

    Authenticate to Sage 300 using Basic authentication.

    Connect Using Basic Authentication

    You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to Sage 300. Note that the provider reuses the session opened by Sage 300 using cookies. This means that your credentials are used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from Sage 300 are used for authentication.

    • Url: Set this to the url of the server hosting Sage 300. Construct a URL for the Sage 300 Web API as follows: {protocol}://{host-application-path}/v{version}/{tenant}/ For example, http://localhost/Sage300WebApi/v1.0/-/.
    • User: Set this to the username of your account.
    • Password: Set this to the password of your account.
    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab in the Add Sage 300 Connection page and update the User-based permissions. Updating permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

When connecting to Connect AI through the REST API, the OData API, or the Virtual SQL Server, a Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI. It is best practice to create a separate PAT for each service to maintain granularity of access.

  1. Click on the Gear icon () at the top right of the Connect AI app to open the settings page.
  2. On the Settings page, go to the Access Tokens section and click Create PAT.
  3. Give the PAT a name and click Create. Creating a new PAT
  4. 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 and a PAT generated, you are ready to connect to Sage 300 data from Power Apps.

Connecting to CData Connect AI

To use Connect AI to integrate Sage 300 data into your Power Apps, you need a new SQL Server connection:

  1. Log in to Power Apps
  2. Click Dataverse -> Connections -> New connection
  3. Select SQL Server Creating a new SQL Server Connection
  4. In the connection wizard:

    • Choose to connect directly
    • Set SQL server name to tds.cdata.com,14333
    • Set SQL database name to the name of the Sage 300 connection (e.g. Sage3001)
    • Set Username to a Connect AI user (e.g. [email protected])
    • Set Password to the PAT for the above user
    • Click Create Connecting to Connect AI

Building a Data-Centric App for Sage 300 Data

With the connection to Connect AI configured, you are ready to integrate live Sage 300 data into the apps you build in Power Apps.

  1. Log in to Power Apps
  2. Click Create and select "SQL" Creating a new app from data
  3. Select the SQL Server connection you created
  4. Search for or choose a table to work with
  5. Click Connect Connecting to Sage 300 data
  6. Customize the newly created app just like you would any other, including changing the layout and setting the fields exposed in BrowseScreen, DetailScreen, and EditScreen Customizing the Sage 300 data app

At this point, you have an app with read access to live Sage 300 data that you can save and publish for use within your organization.

SQL Access to Sage 300 Data from Cloud Applications

Now you have a direct connection to live Sage 300 data from Microsoft Power Apps. You can create more connections and apps to drive business — all without replicating Sage 300 data.

To get real-time data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, sign up for a free trial of CData Connect AI.

Ready to get started?

Learn more about CData Connect AI or sign up for free trial access:

Free Trial

In this article

Related articles