HR to ITSM
Factorial to TOPdesk integration: teams and locations as department and branch, with onboarding and offboarding incidents
With an integration between Factorial and TOPdesk, every new employee from Factorial becomes a person in TOPdesk, with the branch from the Factorial location, the department from the team and the manager, and an onboarding incident reaches the right operator group before the start date. When an employee is terminated in Factorial, the service desk gets an offboarding incident one week before the last working day, and after that day the person is archived in TOPdesk.
What the integration does
Organisations with Factorial for HR and TOPdesk as service desk pass new colleagues to IT by email, often only in the week they start. Teams are regularly reshuffled in Factorial, while the departments in TOPdesk still show last year's structure.
- HR creates a new employee with a contract in Factorial, with location, team and manager.
- Factorial reports the new employee right away. KoppelHet puts the person in TOPdesk, with the location as branch and the team as department.
- Four weeks before the start date an onboarding incident reaches the operator group of the office, with job, team and manager in the text.
- When someone moves to another team or office in Factorial, the person in TOPdesk follows and IT gets a change incident for access and equipment.
- On a termination an offboarding incident arrives one week before the last working day. After that day the person is archived in TOPdesk.
What to watch for with Factorial and TOPdesk
- An employee can be in several teams in Factorial, and teams sit under other teams. TOPdesk holds one department per person. KoppelHet picks the team someone is directly in, not the parent team they only belong to through a sub-team.
- Factorial has a field called identifier, but it holds a passport or national ID number. That does not belong in the service desk. As the employee number in TOPdesk KoppelHet uses the number the organisation assigns itself in Factorial.
- Besides the manager, Factorial also has a separate approver for time off. In TOPdesk only the actual manager becomes the person's manager, so requests that need approval reach the right person.
- Factorial resends a notification that does not arrive, and gives no unique identifier per message. KoppelHet records per employee which incident is already in TOPdesk, so the same new colleague never produces two onboarding incidents.
- After two days without a successful delivery Factorial switches the notification subscription off. A departure recorded in that period would then never reach TOPdesk. KoppelHet therefore compares all employees with TOPdesk daily and switches the subscription back on.
- A termination in Factorial can be reverted. The service desk then gets an addition to the offboarding incident saying the departure is off, and the person stays active in TOPdesk.
- Notifications requested with the rights of an ordinary user only contain what that user may see in Factorial. KoppelHet uses a company-level key, so management and HR themselves also reach TOPdesk.
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 personal data sent that the service desk does not need?
No. Factorial also sends bank and identification data with a notification. KoppelHet only takes name, email, employee number, team, location, manager and dates.
What if there are already people in TOPdesk?
At the start we match them once on employee number or email address. Anyone who cannot be matched goes on a list for the service desk.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- Factorial is read through the Factorial REST API (version in the path, for example 2026-10-01) with an API key or company token. Webhook subscriptions on employees/employee/create_with_contract, employees/employee/update, employees/employee/terminate and employees/employee/unterminate, plus teams/membership/move. Every delivery carries the self-chosen challenge in the x-factorial-wh-challenge header. Factorial retries at most 20 times within 48 hours and then disables the subscription.
- TOPdesk is written through the TOPdesk REST API (Supporting Files) with an operator with an application password. Persons with employeeNumber (at most 20 characters), firstName (30), surName (50), branch, department and manager; archiving through /tas/api/persons/id/{id}/archive.
- Incidents with POST /tas/api/incidents (callerLookup to the person, briefDescription, request, operatorGroup, category, targetDate and externalNumber). KoppelHet stores per employee and per event which incident has already been created.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in Factorial | Field in TOPdesk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
company_identifier | employeeNumber | At most 20 characters in TOPdesk; without a company number the Factorial id |
preferred_name of first_name | firstName | At most 30 characters |
last_name | surName | At most 50 characters |
email | email | |
location_id (Location) | branch | |
Team (directe teamlidmaatschap) | department | One team per person, chosen at the start |
manager_id | manager | Not the time-off approver (timeoff_manager_id) |
terminated_on | employmentTerminationDate (contract) en archiveren | |
Nieuwe medewerker, wijziging of beëindiging | Melding (incidents) met callerLookup, operatorGroup en targetDate |
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