HR to ITSM
BambooHR to Zendesk integration: internal users from BambooHR and tasks for onboarding and offboarding
With an integration between BambooHR and Zendesk, every employee from BambooHR is an end user in Zendesk, with their employee number as external ID and their division as organisation, and KoppelHet creates a task for the IT group for every hire or end date. The free BambooHR app for Zendesk also shows HR details in a ticket's sidebar, but does not create users itself.
What the integration does
Organisations that use BambooHR for HR and Zendesk also as an internal service desk for IT or HR often let employees appear in Zendesk with their first email. Their profile then only holds an address, and whether someone is still employed has to be looked up in BambooHR by the agent.
- BambooHR reports a new employee or a change; KoppelHet briefly waits for more changes to the same employee and then fetches them.
- KoppelHet creates or updates the end user on external ID, without a verification email.
- The membership of the organisation for their division is added or moved.
- Within the onboarding lead time a task follows for the IT group, with the start date as due date.
- An end date produces an offboarding task; after the last working day the user is suspended.
What to watch for with BambooHR and Zendesk
- The BambooHR app for Zendesk looks up an employee by the requester's email address. KoppelHet sets the work email from BambooHR as the email on the Zendesk user, so the app finds data for every colleague, even if someone first emailed from another address.
- Zendesk only allows a few create-or-update calls per minute per end user. BambooHR sometimes sends several notifications shortly after each other on an import or edit; KoppelHet merges them per employee into one call.
- Overwriting the organisation field on a Zendesk user removes all other organisations. KoppelHet therefore moves someone to another BambooHR division through memberships, so an organisation that IT added itself stays in place.
- Tickets from a suspended user are also suspended in Zendesk. KoppelHet only suspends a leaver after their last working day from BambooHR, so a question in the final week still reaches the service desk normally.
- Zendesk uses its own names for time zones, not IANA names. KoppelHet converts the BambooHR location to a Zendesk time zone through a fixed table, so the due date of an onboarding task for an office abroad is correct.
- The external ID in Zendesk is case-insensitive and unique per account. The BambooHR employee number therefore works as a fixed key, even if an employee gets a new work email after a name change.
This integration is also part of joiner, mover, leaver.
How we build and run it
- The integration runs on the KoppelHet platform, hosted in a data centre in the EU.
- Every sync and every error is visible in the functional log; on an error your administrator is notified.
- A change that cannot go through is not half-applied but queued for another attempt.
- KoppelHet is ISO 27001 certified. Data travels encrypted and stays on the platform no longer than needed.
- After go-live we manage the integration and adjust it when your process changes.
- The integration fits next to your existing integration layer. Only the fields in the design are transferred; the platform keeps no register of its own.
Implementation and price
This is not an app you switch on. We build the integration for your organisation on our platform, with building blocks we reuse on every project. So it is custom work that does not start from scratch.
A consultant prepares the intake and analyses both systems. We then record the mapping and exceptions field by field, test in the test or acceptance environment and go live at a moment you choose. Costs are a one-off amount for the setup and a monthly amount for platform, monitoring and support.
Frequently asked questions
Is the BambooHR app not enough?
For looking up data in a ticket, yes. The app does not handle users, organisations and tasks for joiners and leavers.
Do new colleagues get a welcome email from Zendesk?
No, KoppelHet creates them without a verification email. An invitation to the help centre can be added later as an extension.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- BambooHR through event-based webhooks (employee.created, employee.updated with monitor fields and changedFields, employee.deleted) and GET /api/v1/employees/changed?since= as a safety net; then the employee record with employeeNumber, workEmail, division, department, jobTitle, location and terminationDate.
- Zendesk through POST /api/v2/users/create_or_update (match on email or external_id, skip_verify_email, user_fields, time_zone; 5 requests per minute per end user and 1 per second per account), the Organization Memberships API and suspended on departure. Tasks through the Tickets API with type task, due_at, requester_id and group_id.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in BambooHR | Field in Zendesk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
employeeNumber | external_id | |
firstName en lastName | name | |
workEmail | email | Also the key for the BambooHR app |
division | Organisatielidmaatschap | |
department | Gebruikersveld afdeling | |
jobTitle | Gebruikersveld functie | |
location | Gebruikersveld locatie en time_zone | |
terminationDate | Offboardingtaak, daarna suspended |
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