HR to ITSM

SAP HCM TOPdesk integration: people and onboarding tickets from SAP

With an integration between SAP HCM and TOPdesk, employees from SAP are persons in TOPdesk, with department, branch and manager, and KoppelHet creates an incident or change for the right operator group for every new colleague, job change or departure. A hiring or leaving action in SAP results in an onboarding or offboarding ticket in good time, and SAP only sends the Dutch employees to KoppelHet, within your own network.

Discuss your integration How the integration works

Written by Marcel van Beek, founder and integration specialistLast updated: 9 November 2026

What the integration does

Organisations that use SAP HCM in their own data centre and TOPdesk for IT and facilities get new employees to the service desk through an email from HR, and the desk enters them by hand. Leavers remain as persons for months, and after a reorganisation the departments in TOPdesk no longer match SAP.

HR enters the hire action in SAP, often weeks in advance.
SAP sends the changed data to the KoppelHet program in your network.
If the department does not exist in TOPdesk yet, KoppelHet creates it first. Then the employee arrives in TOPdesk as a person.
Straight after that an onboarding change starts from your template, with the start date in it, so IT and facilities have time.
One week before the last working day an offboarding ticket arrives for laptop, badge and access; after the last working day KoppelHet archives the person.
The onboarding incident is in the new colleague's name and goes to the operator group of the branch, with the start date as target date and job, department and manager in the text. If the service desk wants fixed tasks, it becomes a change from a template.
A new job or department results in a change ticket, so IT adjusts access and equipment.

Out: Person with employee number and name · Department from the organisational unit · Branch · Onboarding change from a template · Archiving and offboarding change on departure · Onboarding incident or change with start date, job, department and manager · Change ticket for a new job or department, offboarding ticket before departure

What to watch for with SAP HCM and TOPdesk

The type of action in SAP decides the ticket: hiring gives an onboarding ticket, an organisational change a change ticket and leaving an offboarding ticket.
If a hiring action in SAP is deleted before its start date, the open onboarding ticket gets an action saying so, so IT no longer prepares a workplace.
Personnel subareas in SAP often match locations. KoppelHet chooses the operator group of the ticket based on the personnel subarea from the organisational assignment.
SAP HCM only sends the infotypes that changed. If only the surname changes, KoppelHet completes the rest with what is already known, so the person in TOPdesk keeps their department and branch.
Actions in SAP are often entered weeks in advance, with their own start date. KoppelHet creates the person and the onboarding change as soon as the action arrives, and only archives on the day after the last working day.
SAP records the organisation as a tree of organisational units, and TOPdesk has a flat list of departments with unique names. Two units both called 'Planning' in SAP get the name of the parent unit added in TOPdesk.
SAP HCM runs in your own network and TOPdesk usually in the cloud. SAP sends the data to a KoppelHet program inside the network, which only connects outwards; no entry into SAP is added.
SAP always includes a fixed set of basic infotypes when sending HR master data. We leave address and bank details out in the distribution model, and KoppelHet only passes name, employee number, department, branch and job title to TOPdesk.
SAP keeps the surname prefix in its own field, and so does TOPdesk. KoppelHet transfers it one to one, so searching by surname in TOPdesk works as the service desk expects.
Whether someone is employed is held in SAP in the status of the action. KoppelHet archives based on that status, not on a missing employee number, so someone on unpaid leave does not disappear from 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, architecture and compliance

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.

Price indication · Complex

Frequently asked questions

Can we also have tickets created for onboarding and offboarding?

Yes. A hiring action results in an onboarding incident or a change from your template, and a leaving action in an offboarding ticket before the last working day. The operator group follows the personnel subarea.

Does SAP need to be reachable from outside?

No. SAP sends the data to a KoppelHet program in your network, which only connects outwards.

What does our SAP administrator need to set up?

A distribution model and partner profile for HR master data, filtered on Dutch employees. We supply the settings; the administrator puts them in SAP.

What happens to a leaver who has an operator account?

TOPdesk archives the operator together with the person. The offboarding change makes sure the service desk knows access and equipment also need to come back.

What can be traced afterwards for an audit?

Every action of the integration is recorded in the audit logging of the KoppelHet platform, with the SAP action it followed. KoppelHet works with an ISO 27001 certified management system.

Technical details for IT

For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.

SAP HCM verstuurt HR-stamgegevens via ALE met het berichttype HRMD_A (IDocs), aangemaakt door change pointers, met een distributiemodel en partnerprofiel dat filtert op Nederlandse medewerkers. Een KoppelHet-agent ontvangt de IDocs binnen het netwerk. Infotypes 0000 (maatregelen, STAT2), 0001 (organisatorische toewijzing) en 0002 (persoonsgegevens); sleutel PERNR.
Naar TOPdesk schrijven we via de TOPdesk REST API (Supporting Files voor personen, afdelingen en vestigingen met het SAP-personeelsnummer als externe link; Change voor wijzigingen vanuit een sjabloon). firstName tot 30 tekens, prefixes tot 10, surName tot 50. Archiveren van een persoon archiveert ook een gekoppelde operator.
Tickets through the TOPdesk REST API: incidents with POST /tas/api/incidents (callerLookup to the person, briefDescription, request, category, operatorGroup, targetDate and externalNumber), or changes with POST /tas/api/operatorChanges from a template (template and requester). KoppelHet stores per employee which incident or change has already been created, per hire and per end date.

Which fields are transferred

The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.

Field in SAP HCM	Field in TOPdesk	Notes
`PERNR`	`employeeNumber`	Fixed key
`Voornaam (infotype 0002)`	`firstName`	At most 30 characters
`Voorvoegsel (infotype 0002)`	`prefixes`	At most 10 characters
`Achternaam (infotype 0002)`	`surName`	At most 50 characters
`Organisatie-eenheid (infotype 0001)`	`department`	Unique name; with the parent unit added for duplicate names
`Personeelsgebied of -deelgebied (infotype 0001)`	`branch`	Through a lookup table
`Functie of positie (infotype 0001)`	`jobTitle`
`Maatregel indiensttreding (infotype 0000)`	`Onboardingwijziging met startdatum`
`Maatregel uitdiensttreding (infotype 0000)`	`Archiveren en offboardingwijziging`
`Indiensttreding, wijziging of vertrek`	`Melding (incidents) of wijziging uit sjabloon (operatorChanges)`	Chosen per event at the start
`Gesynchroniseerde persoon`	`callerLookup of requester`	The ticket is in the employee's name
`Begindatum van de maatregel`	`targetDate en briefDescription`	For example Onboarding 01-11-2026: name
`Functie, afdeling en leidinggevende`	`request (tekst van de melding)`
`Vestiging of afdeling`	`operatorGroup en category`	Operator group per branch

Sources

Key facts

Direction: SAP HCM → TOPdesk · One way
When: HR enters an action for hiring, transfer or leaving in SAP HCM, or changes personal data or organisational assignment
Frequency: Shortly after SAP sends the changes, usually several times a day, with actions on the start date of the action
What is transferred: Person with employee number and name
Department from the organisational unit
Branch
Onboarding change from a template
Archiving and offboarding change on departure
Onboarding incident or change with start date, job, department and manager
Change ticket for a new job or department, offboarding ticket before departure
Implementation time: Indication: three to six weeks, depending on pay components and entities

Does this fit your situation?

Take the online intake. A consultant prepares the questions for your systems and then works out the design and the quote.

Discuss your integration

SAP HCM TOPdesk integration: people and onboarding tickets from SAP

What the integration does

What to watch for with SAP HCM and TOPdesk

How we build and run it

Implementation and price

Frequently asked questions

Can we also have tickets created for onboarding and offboarding?

Does SAP need to be reachable from outside?

What does our SAP administrator need to set up?

What happens to a leaver who has an operator account?

What can be traced afterwards for an audit?

Technical details for IT

Which fields are transferred

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