Integrate Trae with Live Workday Data via CData Connect AI

Yazhini G
Yazhini G
Technical Marketing Engineer
Use the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to enable Trae to securely access and query live Workday data from within the AI-powered IDE.

Trae is an AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) that pairs a familiar editor with agent modes such as Builder and SOLO. It supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), so you can add external tools and data sources and give the agent access to live data.

By integrating Trae with CData Connect AI through the built-in MCP Server, Trae gains governed, real-time access to live Workday data. You can list catalogs, explore schemas, and query records from Workday data using natural language prompts, with all data access running securely against authorized sources.

This article explains how to configure Workday connectivity in Connect AI, generate the required personal access token, install Trae, add the Connect AI MCP Server, configure an LLM model, and verify the integration by querying live Workday data from the Trae agent.

About Workday Data Integration

CData provides the easiest way to access and integrate live data from Workday. Customers use CData connectivity to:

  • Access the tables and datasets you create in Prism Analytics Data Catalog, working with the native Workday data hub without compromising the fidelity of your Workday system.
  • Access Workday Reports-as-a-Service to surface data from departmental datasets not available from Prism and datasets larger than Prism allows.
  • Access base data objects with WQL, REST, or SOAP, getting more granular, detailed access but with the potential need for Workday admins or IT to help craft queries.

Users frequently integrate Workday with analytics tools such as Tableau, Power BI, and Excel, and leverage our tools to replicate Workday data to databases or data warehouses. Access is secured at the user level, based on the authenticated user's identity and role.

For more information on configuring Workday to work with CData, refer to our Knowledge Base articles: Comprehensive Workday Connectivity through Workday WQL and Reports-as-a-Service & Workday + CData: Connection & Integration Best Practices.


Getting Started


Step 1: Configure Workday connectivity for Trae

Connectivity to Workday from Trae is made possible through Connect AI's Remote MCP Server. To interact with Workday data from Trae, start by creating and configuring a Workday 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 Workday from the Add Connection panel
    3. Selecting data source
  3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Workday.

    To connect to Workday, users need to find the Tenant and BaseURL and then select their API type.

    Obtaining the BaseURL and Tenant

    To obtain the BaseURL and Tenant properties, log into Workday and search for "View API Clients." On this screen, you'll find the Workday REST API Endpoint, a URL that includes both the BaseURL and Tenant.

    The format of the REST API Endpoint is: https://domain.com/subdirectories/mycompany, where:

    • https://domain.com/subdirectories/ is the BaseURL.
    • mycompany (the portion of the url after the very last slash) is the Tenant.
    For example, in the REST API endpoint https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com/ccx/api/v1/mycompany, the BaseURL is https://wd3-impl-services1.workday.com and the Tenant is mycompany.

    Using ConnectionType to Select the API

    The value you use for the ConnectionType property determines which Workday API you use. See our Community Article for more information on Workday connectivity options and best practices.

    APIConnectionType Value
    WQLWQL
    Reports as a ServiceReports
    RESTREST
    SOAPSOAP

    Authentication

    Your method of authentication depends on which API you are using.

    • WQL, Reports as a Service, REST: Use OAuth authentication.
    • SOAP: Use Basic or OAuth authentication.

    See the Help documentation for more information on configuring OAuth with Workday.

    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 Trae. 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 Workday connection configured and a PAT generated, Trae can now connect to Workday data through Connect AI.

Step 2: Install Trae and configure the Connect AI MCP Server

Next, install Trae, add the Connect AI Remote MCP Server, and configure an LLM model so the agent can discover and call live data tools through Connect AI.

  1. Download and install the Trae IDE, then launch the application
  2. Switch to SOLO mode using the toggle at the top left, or press Ctrl + Alt + \ Switching to SOLO mode in Trae
  3. Click Toggle AI Sidebar to open the chat panel Opening the AI sidebar in Trae
  4. Open Settings, then select MCP from the left menu Navigating to MCP settings
  5. Click Add Manually Adding an MCP server manually
  6. In the Configure Manually dialog, paste the following configuration and click Confirm: 
    {
  "mcpServers": {
    "cdata-connect-ai": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Basic your_base64_encoded_email_PAT"
      }
    }
  }
}

    Note: Trae 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. For example, given [email protected]:ABC123...XYZ789, the Authorization header value becomes something like: Basic dXNlckBkb21haW4uY29tOkFCQzEyMy4uLlhZWjc4OQ==

    Configuring the Connect AI MCP Server

Configure an LLM model

Trae requires at least one LLM model to power the agent's reasoning. Add a model so the agent can interpret prompts and call MCP tools through Connect AI.

  1. Return to Settings and select Models
  2. Click Add Model, choose a provider such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, select a model, enter your API key, and click Add Model Adding an LLM model and API key

With the MCP server added and an LLM model configured, Trae is ready to query live Workday data through Connect AI.

Step 3: Query live Workday data from Trae

With the integration complete, use the Trae agent to interact with live Workday data through natural language prompts handled by the configured LLM.

  1. In the chat panel, type @ and select Builder with MCP. Confirm that cdata-connect-ai is listed under Tools - MCP Selecting the Builder with MCP agent
  2. Enter a prompt to interact with your data, for example:
    • List all catalogs in cdata-connect-ai
    • Show the available schemas and tables for Workday
    • Query the top 5 records from a table in Workday data
  3. Trae calls the Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from Workday data Querying live data from the Trae agent

At this point, the Trae agent communicates with the Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live Workday data through remote MCP tools directly from the IDE.

Get 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.

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