An onboarding ticket from HR works well when it arrives at a fixed lead time, for example four weeks before the start date, contains all the data IT needs and is created only once per hire. The same applies to leavers with an offboarding ticket a week before the last working day, and a new job or department produces a change ticket.
That sounds simple. Most service desks that do this by hand run into the same three questions: when should the ticket arrive, what is in it, and how do you prevent a change in HR from producing a second ticket. This article goes through them one by one.
When the ticket should arrive
The lead time depends on what IT and facilities have to do. Ordering a laptop and making a pass takes time, returning them less. A common default:
- onboarding: four weeks before the start date;
- offboarding: a week before the last working day;
- job change: as soon as HR records a new job or department, with the effective date in the ticket.
You set those lead times per organisation. With AFAS, there is an extra condition: the integration waits until HR has completed the hiring workflow. That way the service desk only receives checked data. That is how an integration of AFAS with TOPdesk works.
Not every change belongs with the service desk. IT does not need to know about a change of address, but it does about a job change. You decide which changes produce a ticket.
What is in it
A good onboarding ticket contains start date, job, department, manager and location. Many HR systems also have custom fields, such as laptop or phone yes or no. Those go into the text or the form of the ticket, so IT knows what needs to be ready without asking.
The ticket lands in the form the service desk already works with:
- in TOPdesk, an incident or a change from a template, possibly a standard change with fixed tasks for IT and facilities;
- in ServiceNow, a catalogue item whose flow creates the tasks per team;
- in Freshservice, the onboarding process or a catalogue item;
- in Jira Service Management, a request type;
- in Xurrent, a template.
In Freshservice and Jira Service Management, the request can be submitted on behalf of the manager. Questions from IT then go to the manager and not to HR. An example is the integration of HiBob with Jira Service Management.
Preventing duplicate tickets
Duplicate tickets arise when an integration only looks at today's state. Every time HR changes something about a new employee, it then looks like a new hire.
The solution is for the integration to remember per employee which tickets already exist: one onboarding ticket per hire and one offboarding ticket per end date. Three cases follow from that:
The end date moves. An offboarding ticket then follows for the new date. The same date never produces two tickets.
A contract is extended. A new employment contract that follows directly on from the previous one is not a departure for the service desk. Only a different job or unit produces a change ticket.
A hire is withdrawn. If that happens after the onboarding ticket already exists, the open ticket gets a note. IT then does not prepare a laptop for someone who is not coming.
The integration's first day
At go-live, all current employees are already in HR. They should not get an onboarding ticket. The first round therefore only records the current state and creates no tickets. After that, only new events produce a ticket.
For that first round, the service desk can see the full text of each ticket in a trial mode, without anything being created. That way you approve the text before it starts for real. HR does not have to do anything differently in the meantime: they work in the HR system as they do now.
How KoppelHet builds this
KoppelHet builds the integration per organisation on its own platform. We set the lead times, the operator group, the category and the text of each ticket per customer. Tasks, approvals and groups stay in your service desk's workflow. We build this from systems including Visma Raet YouForce, AFAS and Workday to TOPdesk, ServiceNow, Freshservice, Xurrent or Jira Service Management. Examples are the integration of YouForce with TOPdesk and Workday with ServiceNow. As an indication, allow two to four weeks until go-live.
Read more about onboarding and offboarding tickets, about the whole integration from HR to the service desk, or about what has to happen outside the service desk under joiners, movers and leavers.