Use Claude to Talk to Your Avalara AvaTax Data via CData Connect Cloud

Claude is a family of advanced large language models (LLMs) built by Anthropic, an AI research company founded in 2021. These models power the Claude conversational assistant and developer tools.

CData Connect Cloud offers a dedicated cloud-to-cloud interface for connecting to Avalara AvaTax data. The CData Connect Cloud Remote MCP Server enables secure communication between Claude and Avalara AvaTax. This allows you to ask questions and take actions on your Avalara AvaTax data using Claude, all without the need for data replication to a natively supported database. With its inherent optimized data processing capabilities, CData Connect Cloud efficiently channels all supported SQL operations, including filters and JOINs, directly to Avalara AvaTax. This leverages server-side processing to swiftly deliver the requested Avalara AvaTax data.

Step 1: Configure Avalara AvaTax Connectivity for Claude

Connectivity to Avalara AvaTax from Claude is made possible through CData Connect Cloud Remote MCP. To interact with Avalara AvaTax data from Claude, we start by creating and configuring a Avalara AvaTax connection in CData Connect Cloud.

1. Log into Connect Cloud, click Sources, and then click Add Connection

2. Select "Avalara AvaTax" from the Add Connection panel

3. Enter the necessary authentication properties to connect to Avalara AvaTax.

   The primary method for performing basic authentication is to provide your login credentials, as follows:

   • User: Set this to your username.
   • Password: Set this to your password.

   Optionally, if you are making use of a sandbox environment, set the following:

   • UseSandbox: Set this to true if you are authenticating with a sandbox account.

   Authenticating Using Account Number and License Key

   Alternatively, you can authenticate using your account number and license key. Connect to data using the following:

   • AccountId: Set this to your Account Id. The Account Id is listed in the upper right hand corner of the admin console.
   • LicenseKey: Set this to your Avalara Avatax license key. You can generate a license key by logging into Avalara Avatax as an account administrator and navigating to Settings -> Reset License Key.
4. Click Save & Test

Step 2: Connect Claude to CData Connect Cloud

Follow these steps to add a CData Connect Cloud connector in Claude:

1. Sign in to Claude.ai or create a new account.
2. Expand the left navigation menu.
3. In the bottom-left corner, click your user name and select Settings from the menu. The Settings screen appears.
4. In the Settings screen, click Connectors.
5. In the top-right corner, set your button toggle to Organization connectors.
6. Click Add custom connector at the bottom of the page.
7. Enter a name for the connector (such as Connect Cloud MCP).
8. In the Remote MCP server URL field, enter https://mcp.cloud.cdata.com/mcp.
9. Click Add to save the connector. The Connect Cloud MCP connector appears under Connectors.
10. Click Connect to the right of the connector and enter your CData Connect Cloud user name and password. You have now connected Claude to CData Connect Cloud.

11. Click the three dots after Connected and select Tools and settings.

12. Review the provided tools and enable or disable specific tools made available by the server. In addition, determine whether you want unsupervised access to the tools, or whether you want Claude to ask your permission.
13. Click Done when finished with your settings.

Step 3: Explore Live Avalara AvaTax Avalara AvaTax data with Claude

1. In the left navigation menu of Claude, click New chat.
2. You can now start exploring your data with natural language prompts. Claude outlines the steps it uses to retrieve data from the source in CData Connect Cloud. Refer to CData's prompt library for prompt ideas.

NOTE: Claude's setup process is subject to change. Refer to Claude's documentation for the latest setup information.

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