HR to ITSM
SAP SuccessFactors to Zendesk integration: colleagues as Zendesk users, with language, company and a task for joiners and leavers
With an integration between SAP SuccessFactors and Zendesk, every employee from Employee Central is a user in Zendesk, in the organisation of their company and in their own language, and KoppelHet creates a task for the internal service desk for every hire or departure. A colleague who has never emailed is therefore already known when they ask their first question.
What the integration does
Organisations that use Zendesk as internal service desk for IT or HR, with SuccessFactors Employee Central as source, only get users created when someone emails. The service desk then sees no company or department with the question, and a hire arrives as a loose email from the manager.
- HR records a hire in Employee Central.
- KoppelHet creates or updates the user in Zendesk on the SuccessFactors person ID, without a verification email.
- The user gets membership of their company's organisation, and department and job title in custom fields.
- A task is created for the service desk with the start date as due date.
- On a termination an offboarding task follows; KoppelHet keeps track per employee of which tasks already exist.
What to watch for with SAP SuccessFactors and Zendesk
- Zendesk has no SuccessFactors app of its own; integrations run through third-party platforms or custom work. KoppelHet uses the Zendesk Users API and the SuccessFactors OData API directly.
- Zendesk finds a user by email address or external ID. KoppelHet sets the SuccessFactors person ID as external ID, so a new work address after a name change ends up on the same user.
- SuccessFactors stores an employee's language in a form like nl_NL, while Zendesk expects a code like nl-NL. KoppelHet converts the language, so automatic messages from the service desk arrive in the colleague's language.
- Overwriting the organisation field of a Zendesk user removes their other organisations. An employee with employments at two SuccessFactors companies therefore gets memberships through the separate memberships API, one per company.
- Zendesk allows only five create or update requests per minute per user. KoppelHet therefore spreads a mass change in SuccessFactors, such as a new organisation structure on 1 January, over time, or sends it as a bulk job.
- In Zendesk the tickets of a suspended user are suspended too. KoppelHet therefore does not suspend a departed employee straight away, but removes them from the organisations and marks them as left; agents are suspended, so their licence is freed.
- SuccessFactors only returns a hire with a future start date if you ask for future records. KoppelHet does that, creates the user without a verification email, and sets up the task for the service desk well before the first working day.
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
Do all employees end up in Zendesk, even if they never email?
Yes, if that is what we agree. No verification email is sent, so employees notice nothing until they ask a question themselves.
Does HR data go to Zendesk?
Only what the service desk needs: name, work email, language, company, department and job title. Salary and private data stay in SuccessFactors.
Does this also work for an HR service desk in Zendesk?
Yes. The same users and organisations then serve the HR questions; tasks for joiners and leavers can go to an HR group.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- SuccessFactors Employee Central through the OData API (v2) with OAuth 2.0 and a read-only role. PerPerson, PerPersonal, PerEmail, User (defaultLocale), EmpEmployment and EmpJob with fromDate and toDate, plus FOCompany and FODepartment.
- Zendesk through the Users API with create_or_update (matching on email or external_id) and skip_verify_email; limit 5 requests per minute per user and 1 per second per account, 429 with Retry-After. Organisations through external_id, memberships through the Organization Memberships API, tasks through the Tickets API with type task, due_at and requester_id.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in SAP SuccessFactors | Field in Zendesk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
PerPerson.personIdExternal | external_id | Zendesk treats this ID as case-insensitive |
PerPersonal (voornaam, achternaam) | name | |
PerEmail (zakelijk) | email | |
User.defaultLocale | locale | Converted to a BCP-47 code, for example nl_NL to nl-NL |
EmpJob.company (FOCompany) | Organisatielidmaatschap | |
EmpJob.department | Keuzeveld afdeling | |
EmpJob.jobTitle | Gebruikersveld functie | |
EmpJob.startDate bij een aanname | Taak met due_at |
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