HR to ITSM
Sympa to Freshservice integration: requesters from data cards and requests within the Sympa interface limit
With an integration between Sympa and Freshservice, every employee from Sympa becomes a requester in Freshservice, with department, location and manager, and KoppelHet submits an onboarding request as soon as a start date is set in Sympa. An end date in Sympa is followed by an offboarding request, and after that day KoppelHet deactivates the requester.
What the integration does
Organisations that use Sympa as their HR system and Freshservice for IT often forward new employees and leavers to the service desk by email. The Sympa interface for integrations has a low hourly limit, so an integration that keeps requesting everything quickly gets stuck.
- Through its own Sympa interface KoppelHet only requests data cards changed since the previous run.
- KoppelHet looks up the manager in Freshservice by email and creates or updates the requester.
- On a new start date KoppelHet submits the onboarding request, with department and location as fields.
- On an end date the offboarding request follows; after that day KoppelHet deactivates the requester.
What to watch for with Sympa and Freshservice
- A Sympa interface may make one hundred requests per hour by default, reading and writing combined. A run every fifteen minutes only requests changed data cards in large pages, so four runs an hour cost a few requests at most and there is room left for a full comparison at night.
- The interface reads from a reporting database that is usually updated within a minute, but at the latest after thirty minutes. Each run therefore starts half an hour before the end of the previous one, so an employee who appears late in that database still gets an onboarding request in Freshservice.
- The Sympa administrator chooses the fields and allowed methods per interface. The interface for Freshservice only gets read access and only name, work email, job title, organisation unit, location, manager and dates, so the integration cannot change anything in Sympa or request the BSN or salary.
- For the manager field Sympa can return a target field from that person's data card. KoppelHet requests the work email there and uses a filter to find the requester in Freshservice, so the manager is set as reporting manager and as initiator of the request.
- Tables with validity in Sympa can be requested as they apply on a given day. KoppelHet requests the organisation row on the effective date, so a reorganisation that takes effect next month only changes the department in Freshservice on that day.
- The activity log in Sympa only shows the ten most recent requests of all interfaces. KoppelHet logs per run which data cards were read and which requests were submitted in Freshservice, so a question about a missed onboarding can still be answered after days.
- Freshservice selects the mandatory items of the onboarding kit based on the field values. KoppelHet fills in the organisation unit and location from Sympa, so a new colleague at a production site automatically gets the items for that site.
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
Can the limit of one hundred requests per hour be raised?
According to Sympa yes, through your Sympa contact. For this integration it is usually not needed.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- Sympa through the Sympa Integration API (OData v4) on its own GET-only interface, with X-ApiKey or basic authentication; $filter on modified, $top and $skip, at, since and until for table rows with validity, target fields on the manager's data card field. By default 100 requests per hour per interface, shared across GET, POST and PATCH; reads with a delay of up to 30 minutes; activity log of ten requests.
- Freshservice through the API v2: requesters (create, filter on primary_email, department_ids, location_id, reporting_manager_id, custom_fields, DELETE to deactivate). Requests through POST /api/v2/onboarding_requests and /api/v2/offboarding_requests with fields and initiator_id, admin privileges only.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in Sympa | Field in Freshservice | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Personeelsnummer (uniek identificatieveld) | Eigen aanvragersveld (custom_fields) | Fixed key |
Voornaam en achternaam | first_name en last_name | |
Werkadres | primary_email | |
Functie | job_title | |
Organisatie-eenheid (op ingangsdatum) | department_ids | |
Werklocatie | location_id | |
Leidinggevende, doelveld e-mailadres | reporting_manager_id en initiator_id | |
Begin- en einddatum dienstverband | Onboarding- en offboardingverzoek |
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