Automate Tasks in Power Automate Using the CData API Server and Avalara AvaTax ADO.NET Provider

Power Automate (Microsoft Flow) makes it easy to automate tasks that involve data from multiple systems, on premises or in the cloud. With the CData API Server and Avalara AvaTax ADO.NET Provider (or any of 200+ other ADO.NET Providers), line-of-business users have a native way to create actions based on Avalara AvaTax triggers in Power Automate; the API Server makes it possible for SaaS applications like Power Automate to integrate seamlessly with Avalara AvaTax data through data access standards like Swagger and OData. This article shows how to use wizards in Power Automate and the API Server for Avalara AvaTax to create a trigger -- entities that match search criteria -- and send an email based on the results.

Set Up the API Server

Follow the steps below to begin producing secure and Swagger-enabled Avalara AvaTax APIs:

Deploy

The API Server runs on your own server. On Windows, you can deploy using the stand-alone server or IIS. On a Java servlet container, drop in the API Server WAR file. See the help documentation for more information and how-tos.

The API Server is also easy to deploy on Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, and Heroku.

Connect to Avalara AvaTax

After you deploy, provide authentication values and other connection properties by clicking Settings -> Connections in the API Server administration console. You can then choose the entities you want to allow the API Server access to by clicking Settings -> Resources.

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.

You will also need to enable CORS and define the following sections on the Settings -> Server page. As an alternative, you can select the option to allow all domains without '*'.

1. Access-Control-Allow-Origin: Set this to a value of '*' or specify the domains that are allowed to connect.
2. Access-Control-Allow-Methods: Set this to a value of "GET,PUT,POST,OPTIONS".
3. Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Set this to "x-ms-client-request-id, authorization, content-type".

Authorize API Server Users

After determining the OData services you want to produce, authorize users by clicking Settings -> Users. The API Server uses authtoken-based authentication and supports the major authentication schemes. You can authenticate as well as encrypt connections with SSL. Access can also be restricted by IP address; access is restricted to only the local machine by default.

For simplicity, we will allow the authtoken for API users to be passed in the URL. You will need to add a setting in the Application section of the settings.cfg file, located in the data directory. On Windows, this is the app_data subfolder in the application root. In the Java edition, the location of the data directory depends on your operation system:

1. Windows: C:\ProgramData\CData
2. Unix or Mac OS X: ~/cdata

Add Avalara AvaTax Data to a Flow

You can use the built-in HTTP + Swagger connector to use a wizard to design a Avalara AvaTax process flow:

1. In Power Automate, click My Flows -> Create from Blank.
2. Select the Recurrence action and select a time interval for sending emails. This article uses 1 day.
3. Add an HTTP + Swagger action by searching for Swagger.
4. Enter the URL to the Swagger metadata document: https://MySite:MyPort/api.rsc/@MyAuthtoken/$oas
5. Select the "Return Transactions" operation.

6. Build the OData query to retrieve Avalara AvaTax data. This article defines the following OData filter expression in the $filter box:

   Code eq '051349'

   See the API Server help documentation for more on filtering and examples of the supported OData.

Trigger an Action

You can now work with Transactions entities in your process flow. Follow the steps to send an automated email:

1. Add an SMTP - Send Email action.
2. Enter the address and credentials for the SMTP server and name the connection. Be sure to enable encryption if supported by your server.
3. Enter the message headers and body. You can add Avalara AvaTax columns in these boxes.