Connecting to Avalara Avatax
The Avalara Avatax API uses basic authentication. 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 Login Credentials
The primary method for performing basic authentication is to provide your login credentials, as follows:
- User: Set this to your Avalara Avatax username.
- Password: Set this to your Avalara Avatax password.
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 Avalara Avatax Account Id. The Account Id is listed in the upper right hand corner of the Avalara Avatax 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 adminstrator and navigating to Settings -> Reset License Key.
Fine-Tuning Data Access
You can use the following properties to gain more control over the data returned from Avalara Avatax:
- CompanyCode: Include content from archived spaces in the result. This defaults to false.
- IncludeAdjustedTransactions: Search results will only display contents from the specified space.
Customizing the SSL Configuration
By default, the provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats to do so.
Connecting Through a Firewall or Proxy
HTTP Proxies
To connect through the Windows system proxy, you do not need to set any additional connection properties. To connect to other proxies, set ProxyAutoDetect to false.
In addition, to authenticate to an HTTP proxy, set ProxyAuthScheme, ProxyUser, and ProxyPassword, in addition to ProxyServer and ProxyPort.
Other Proxies
Set the following properties:
- To use a proxy-based firewall, set FirewallType, FirewallServer, and FirewallPort.
- To tunnel the connection, set FirewallType to TUNNEL.
- To authenticate, specify FirewallUser and FirewallPassword.
- To authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, additionally set FirewallType to SOCKS5.
Troubleshooting the Connection
To show provider activity from query execution to network traffic, use Logfile and Verbosity. The examples of common connection errors below show how to use these properties to get more context. Contact the support team for help tracing the source of an error or circumventing a performance issue.
- Authentication errors: Typically, recording a Logfile at Verbosity 4 is necessary to get full details on an authentication error.
- Queries time out: A server that takes too long to respond will exceed the provider's client-side timeout. Often, setting the Timeout property to a higher value will avoid a connection error. Another option is to disable the timeout by setting the property to 0. Setting Verbosity to 2 will show where the time is being spent.
- The certificate presented by the server cannot be validated: This error indicates that the provider cannot validate the server's certificate through the chain of trust. If you are using a self-signed certificate, there is only one certificate in the chain.
To resolve this error, you must verify yourself that the certificate can be trusted and specify to the provider that you trust the certificate. One way you can specify that you trust a certificate is to add the certificate to the trusted system store; another is to set SSLServerCert.