Use Grok to Talk to Your SharePoint Data via CData Connect AI
Grok AI is a large language model developed by xAI for real-time reasoning, tool invocation, and agentic workflows. It enables developers to build AI agents that can reason over live data, discover tools dynamically, and take intelligent actions.
CData Connect AI provides a secure cloud-to-cloud interface for integrating 350+ enterprise data sources with Grok AI. Using Connect AI, live SharePoint data is exposed through a remote MCP endpoint without replication, allowing Grok AI agents to securely query and analyze governed enterprise data in real time.
About SharePoint Data Integration
Accessing and integrating live data from SharePoint has never been easier with CData. Customers rely on CData connectivity to:
- Access data from a wide range of SharePoint versions, including Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and above, and SharePoint Online.
- Access all of SharePoint thanks to support for Hidden and Lookup columns.
- Recursively scan folders to create a relational model of all SharePoint data.
- Use SQL stored procedures to upload and download documents and attachments.
Most customers rely on CData solutions to integrate SharePoint data into their database or data warehouse, while others integrate their SharePoint data with preferred data tools, like Power BI, Tableau, or Excel.
For more information on how customers are solving problems with CData's SharePoint solutions, refer to our blog: Drivers in Focus: Collaboration Tools.
Getting Started
Step 1: Configure SharePoint in CData Connect AI
To enable Grok to query live SharePoint data, first create a SharePoint connection in CData Connect AI. This connection is exposed through the CData Remote MCP Server.
-
Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection.
-
Select "SharePoint" from the Add Connection panel.
-
Enter the required authentication properties.
Set the URL property to the base SharePoint site or to a sub-site. This allows you to query any lists and other SharePoint entities defined for the site or sub-site.
The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid SharePoint user credentials when using SharePoint On-Premise.
If you are connecting to SharePoint Online, set the SharePointEdition to SHAREPOINTONLINE along with the User and Password connection string properties. For more details on connecting to SharePoint Online, see the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation
Click Create & Test.
-
Open the Permissions tab and configure user access.
Add a Personal Access Token
A Personal Access Token (PAT) authenticates MCP requests from Agno to CData Connect AI.
- Open Settings and navigate to Access Tokens.
- Click Create PAT.
-
Save the generated token securely.
Step 2: Install required dependencies
Remote MCP Tools allow Grok to connect to external MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, extending its capabilities with custom tools from third parties or your own implementations. Simply specify a server URL and optional configuration xAI manages the MCP server connection and interaction on your behalf.
Open the terminal and install the required dependencies for the MCP integration using pip.
pip install xai-sdk==1.4.0
The xai-sdk (v1.4.0) enables Remote MCP tools, and python-dotenv is used to securely load environment variables.
pip install python-dotenv
Step 3: Generate an xAI API key
- Create or login to xAI account
- Open xAI API console
- Navigate to API Keys
- Click on create API key
After generating an API key, user need to save it somewhere safe. Recommended option is to export it as an environment variable in your terminal or save it to a .env file.
Step 4: Connect to CData Connect AI
Initialize the Grok client and configure the MCP connection to CData Connect AI. The code below establishes a secure connection and sends a natural language query to your data source.
import os
from xai_sdk import Client
from xai_sdk.chat import user
from xai_sdk.tools import mcp
client = Client(api_key="Your_xAI-API_KEY")
chat = client.chat.create(
model="grok-4-1-fast-non-reasoning",
tools=[
mcp(
server_url="https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
extra_headers={"Authorization": "Basic Username:PAT"} #Base64 Encoded Username:PAT
)
],
include=["verbose_streaming"],
)
chat.append(user("List the top two catalogs for me please"))
is_thinking = True
for response, chunk in chat.stream():
# View the server-side tool calls as they are being made in real-time
for tool_call in chunk.tool_calls:
print(f"
Calling tool: {tool_call.function.name} with arguments: {tool_call.function.arguments}")
if response.usage.reasoning_tokens and is_thinking:
print(f"
Thinking... ({response.usage.reasoning_tokens} tokens)", end="", flush=True)
if chunk.content and is_thinking:
print("
Final Response:")
is_thinking = False
if chunk.content and not is_thinking:
print(chunk.content, end="", flush=True)
print("
Usage:")
print(response.usage)
print(response.server_side_tool_usage)
print("
Server Side Tool Calls:")
print(response.tool_calls)
This code initializes the Grok AI client, connects to CData Connect AI via MCP using Basic Authentication, and streams the response in real-time. The agent automatically discovers available tools, invokes them to query your live data, and displays both the tool calls and final results.
Run the script to see Grok query your connected data source.
Query Results
The output shows Grok invoking MCP tools through CData Connect AI and returning live data from your connected source.
User can now query live data using natural language through Grok AI.
Build agentic workflows with Grok and CData Connect AI
Combining Grok AI with CData Connect AI delivers AI-powered data access without pipelines or custom integrations. Start your free trial today to see how CData can empower Grok with live, secure access to 350+ external systems.