Use ChatGPT to Talk to Your SharePoint Data via CData Connect AI

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Leverage the CData Connect AI Remote MCP Server to enable ChatGPT to securely answer questions and take actions on your SharePoint data for you.

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, launched in November 2022. Based on large language models (LLMs), it enables users to refine and steer conversations through natural language processing. ChatGPT's developer mode, available to Plus and Pro subscribers, provides full Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for connecting to external data sources and tools.

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

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 Connectivity for ChatGPT

Connectivity to SharePoint from ChatGPT is made possible through CData Connect AI Remote MCP. To interact with SharePoint data from ChatGPT, we start by creating and configuring a SharePoint connection in CData Connect AI.

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

    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

    Configuring a connection (Salesforce is shown)
  4. Click Save & Test

With the connection configured, we are ready to connect to SharePoint data from ChatGPT.

Step 2: Connect ChatGPT to CData Connect AI

Follow these steps to add a CData Connect AI connection in ChatGPT:

  1. Sign in to ChatGPT with a Plus or Pro subscription.
  2. Navigate to Apps from the left panel.
  3. Select the CData Connect AI app from the list.
    4. . Search for CData Connect AI
  4. Click Connect to authenticate to your Connect AI account.
    5. Click Connect to authenticate
  5. Click Sign in with CData Connect AI to add Connect AI to your ChatGPT account.
    6. Sign in with CData Connect AI
  6. After successful authorization, you will be redirected back to ChatGPT.
  7. Click Start Chat to start a new conversation in ChatGPT with Connect AI connected at the background.
    8. Start Chat

Step 3: Explore Live SharePoint Data with ChatGPT

  1. Start a new conversation in ChatGPT.
  2. Connect AI should ideally be automatically enabled in the chat. If not, navigate to -> More -> CData Connect AI, under the chatbox, to enable the connector from the dropdown
    3. Enable CData Connect AI in the chat
  3. You can now start exploring your data with natural language prompts. ChatGPT will use the Connect AI MCP server to query your live SharePoint data. Example prompts:
    • "Show me all customers from the last 30 days"
    • "What are my top performing products?"
    • "Analyze sales trends for this quarter"
    • "List all active projects and their current status"
    Refer to CData prompt library for more prompt ideas.
    4. Using natural language to explore your SharePoint data (Salesforce used here).
  4. Permit ChatGPT to access your SharePoint data. Click Query Data to continue, or Deny to refuse.
    5. Give permissions to ChatGPT.
  5. ChatGPT translates your natural language queries into SQL and execute them against your SharePoint data through the Connect AI MCP server.
    6. ChatGPT shows the desired results from your SharePoint data based on the prompts

Get CData Connect AI

To get live data access to hundreds of SaaS, Big Data, and NoSQL sources directly from your cloud applications, try CData Connect AI today!

Ready to get started?

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

Free Trial

In this article

Related articles