Query Live Workday Data in Zed Editor via CData Connect AI

Yazhini G
Yazhini G
Technical Marketing Engineer
Leverage the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to enable Zed Editor to securely access and query live Workday data directly from the development environment.

Zed is a high-performance, open-source code editor built for speed and collaboration. Its built-in AI agent panel supports LLM-powered interactions and MCP (Model Context Protocol) tool integrations, enabling developers to access live external data sources directly within the editor.

By integrating Zed with CData Connect AI through the built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server, the Zed AI agent gains governed, real-time access to live Workday data. This enables developers to query schemas, retrieve records, and explore Workday data without leaving the editor or writing custom integration code.

This article walks through configuring Workday connectivity in Connect AI, registering the CData MCP Server in Zed, and querying live Workday data from the Zed agent panel.

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 Zed

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

  1. Log into Connect AI, click Sources, and then click Add Connection
  2. Select Workday from the Add Connection panel
  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.

  4. Click Save & Test
  5. Navigate to the Permissions tab and update user-based permissions

Add a Personal Access Token

A Personal Access Token (PAT) is used to authenticate the connection to Connect AI from Zed. 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. Copy the token when displayed and store it securely. It will not be shown again

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

Step 2: Configure Connect AI in Zed

Now, let's register the CData Connect AI MCP endpoint in Zed so that the built-in AI agent can discover and call live data tools.

  1. Download and install Zed
  2. Open the agent panel by pressing Ctrl + Shift + /, or by clicking the sparkle icon at the bottom right of the editor
  3. In the agent panel, click the ... (toggle agent menu) and select Add Custom Server from the dropdown
  4. Select the Configure Remote option to configure CData's MCP
  5. An Add MCP Server dialog opens displaying a remote server configuration template. Replace the placeholder content with the following JSON: 
    {
    "cdata": {
        "url": "https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp",
        "headers": {
            "Authorization": "Basic your_base64_encoded_email_PAT"
        }
    }
}

    Note: Combine your Connect AI email and PAT in the format email:PAT, Base64 encode the combined string, and prefix it with Basic. For example, given [email protected]:ABC123...XYZ, the header value becomes something like: Basic dXNlckBteWRvbWFpbjphSzkvbVB4Mi9Rcjd2TjQ...

  6. Click Add Server or press Ctrl + Enter to register the MCP server

Configure an LLM provider

Zed requires at least one LLM provider to power the agent's reasoning. Configure a provider so the agent can interpret queries and call MCP tools through Connect AI.

  1. Click the ... (toggle agent menu) and select Settings
  2. Under LLM Providers, expand your preferred provider (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI, Google AI) and enter your API key
  3. Under Model Context Protocol (MCP) Servers, confirm that cdata appears with a green dot and the toggle is enabled

With the MCP server registered and an LLM provider configured, the Zed agent is ready to query live Workday data through Connect AI.

Step 3: Query live Workday data from the Zed agent

With the integration complete, use the Zed agent panel to explore and interact with live Workday data through natural language prompts.

  1. Open the agent panel using Ctrl + Shift + / and start a new thread
  2. Enter a prompt to interact with your data, for example:
    • List all catalogs in my cdata connection
    • Show the available schemas and tables for Workday
    • Query the top 5 records from a table in Workday data
  3. The agent calls the CData Connect AI MCP Server and returns live results from Workday data

At this point, your Zed agent communicates with the CData Connect AI MCP Server and retrieves live Workday data through remote MCP tools directly from the editor.

Get CData Connect AI

To access 300+ 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 today, and as always, our world-class Support Team is available to assist you with any questions you may have.

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