HR to ITSM
Sympa TOPdesk integration: people and onboarding tickets for the Dutch service desk
With an integration between Sympa and TOPdesk, employees of the Dutch entity from Sympa 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 new employee starts an onboarding incident or a change from your template, and one week before the end date an offboarding ticket arrives for tablet and badge.
What the integration does
Employers that use Sympa for HR and TOPdesk for IT and facilities only give new colleagues their equipment and access badge once a manager files a ticket for it.
- HR records a new employee at the Dutch entity in Sympa.
- Every hour KoppelHet requests the changed employees through the interface the Sympa administrator has set up.
- The person is added in TOPdesk with department, branch and manager, and an onboarding change starts with the start date.
- If the organisational unit or manager changes, the person in TOPdesk follows.
- One week before the end date an offboarding ticket arrives for tablet and badge; after the end date 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.
What to watch for with Sympa and TOPdesk
- KoppelHet fetches start and end dates in the same hourly run as the other employee data. The tickets therefore cost no extra requests within the Sympa interface limit.
- In construction employees often get a tablet for site work. The offboarding ticket template holds tablet and badge as fixed tasks, so they come back on the last working day.
- If an employee moves within the group to the Dutch entity, the entity changes in Sympa but the person stays the same. TOPdesk then gets an onboarding ticket for the Dutch workplace.
- An interface in Sympa has no fixed field list; the administrator chooses the fields. For TOPdesk we only open up name, organisation, job, manager and dates, so reviews and absence stay outside the integration.
- For a field pointing to another employee, such as the manager, Sympa can return a target field of that employee. KoppelHet requests the manager's email address and uses it to find the person in TOPdesk.
- Sympa allows one hundred requests per hour per interface by default. KoppelHet therefore only requests changed employees, in large pages, so an hourly round stays well within the limit.
- A Sympa environment for the whole group holds employees of every country. The interface filters on the Dutch entity, so TOPdesk does not receive people who belong to another service desk.
- Changes can sometimes only be requested from Sympa after half an hour, because the interface reads from a reporting database. A new employee recorded today is therefore in TOPdesk within a few hours at the latest.
- Organisational units in Sympa form a tree, departments in TOPdesk a flat list with unique names. Two units with the same name get the parent unit added in 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
Can we also have tickets created for onboarding and offboarding?
Yes. By default an onboarding incident or a change from your template arrives four weeks before the start date, and an offboarding ticket one week before the end date. Your service desk decides the content in the template.
Does the integration see everything in Sympa?
No. The Sympa administrator decides which fields the interface contains, and for TOPdesk that is only the data the service desk needs.
Who decides what is in the onboarding change?
Your service desk, through a template in TOPdesk. KoppelHet fills it with the person, the branch and the start date.
Do we need to set anything up in Sympa?
An interface in the API panel with the agreed fields and an API key for the integration. That is a one-off.
We already have an integration platform. Does this fit alongside it?
Yes. This integration runs on the KoppelHet platform and asks nothing of your existing integration platform. Every action is in the audit logging, so operations and audit know what happened.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- Sympa is read through the Sympa Integration API (OData v4) on a dedicated interface with X-ApiKey or basic authentication; $filter on modified and on the entity, $top and $skip, and target fields on the manager's datacard field. By default one hundred requests per hour per interface; reads come from the reporting database.
- TOPdesk is written through the TOPdesk REST API (Supporting Files for people, departments and branches; Change for changes from a template). employeeNumber up to 20 characters, firstName up to 30, prefixes up to 10, surName up to 50.
- 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 Sympa | Field in TOPdesk | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Personeelsnummer (uniek veld van de interface) | employeeNumber | At most 20 characters |
Voornaam | firstName | |
Achternaam | surName en prefixes | Split the prefix |
Zakelijk e-mailadres | email | |
Organisatie-eenheid | department | |
Vestiging of werkplek | branch | Through a lookup table |
Functie | jobTitle | |
Leidinggevende (e-mail via doelveld) | manager | Looked up as an existing person |
Start- en einddatum dienstverband | Onboarding- 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 |
Start- of einddatum | 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 |
Related
Greenhouse → Sympa
Greenhouse to Sympa integration: hired candidate as a data card with contract row in Sympa
Recruitee → Sympa
Recruitee to Sympa integration: hired candidates as a data card in Sympa
SmartRecruiters → Sympa
SmartRecruiters to Sympa integration: ready to onboard becomes a data card in Sympa
Sympa → 4PS Construct
Sympa to 4PS Construct integration: fitters of the Dutch employer from Sympa in 4PS, with cost centre as a dimension