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Drive Workplace Productivity by Integrating HCM Solutions with HRIS

A Harbinger Systems White Paper

Harbinger Systems Your partner in technology innovation About Harbinger Systems: Harbinger Systems (www.harbinger-systems.com) is a leading provider of software engineering services to some of the world's best product companies.

This white paper is part of Harbinger’s Human Capital Management services. Harbinger, with an experience of more than 15+ years in the HCM (HR) space, Harbinger has helped leading HCM software companies to build next generation service offerings and deliver some of the greatest success stories touching more than two million lives. Visit our HCM Solutions page to learn more. Visit our website to download or request our white papers on leading edge technologies and trends.

Contents Introduction Integration Case Workflow Architecture Overview Challenges Road Ahead Appendix: Product Integration Readiness Checklist

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A Harbinger Systems White Paper #1

Introduction According to Josh Bersin, an organization on an average has at least three systems catering to their various HCM requirements. With the rapidly evolving HR technologies, organizations are seeking to bundle and sort their various human capital management needs in one place. When a new system comes into an organization’s setup, it needs to talk with the existing legacy systems. For organizations to experience functional togetherness within their systems, HCM vendors need to provide seamless integration between their application and other systems. The degree of integration should not be limited to simply data exchange, but cater towards performance, security, data synchronization and transformation. This paper focuses on addressing some of such key challenges like: • •

Approach to effectively integrate with platforms in heterogeneous ecosystem of HCM applications Achieving maximum reusability and rapid development

This whitepaper gives an overview of some well-known integration mechanisms and provides a distilled checklist to determine a product’s readiness to integrate with some of the popular HRIS systems, such as ADP, Taleo, iCIMS, etc. While discussing integrations, it’s also worth to take a note of different integration types that are applicable in the context of HCM applications, such as: • • • •

Social Integrations Single Sign On Integrations Electronic Data Interchange(EDI) integrations API based integrations

In this paper we are primarily focusing on API integrations and in the following sections, we will discuss the common use case of integrating with ATS and HRIS platforms. For the illustration purpose, we have picked a reference checking system and elaborated different aspect of integration, but it can very well be applied to any platform that needs to be integrated with ATS or HRIS platforms.


Integration case workflow Let us explore the integration approach with an example of a reference checking system. Reference checking system performs candidate verification by integrating with external HRIS. In this integration, the API connector sends candidate status updates which are received from the Reference checking system to HRIS. Below workflow depicts the two-way communication of the Reference Checking System with HRIS along with the integration diagram.

Fig1: API based Integration between two HCM products

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HRIS sends candidate information to the API connector in pre-defined format HRIS integration then performs the necessary authentication by checking data mentioned in the request pre-defined format Once checked, the API connector parses the request in an appropriate structure and creates request objects After parsing, the request is validated on different parameters and checked for authentication Once validated, the candidate profile is created in platform (Reference Checking System) Furthermore, an appropriate acknowledgment is sent to HRIS As candidate Reference checking proceeds, various status updates are sent using API connector to HRIS

Here on, the system bridges the gap between the recruiter and candidate through the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) module. It further enables the HR Recruiter to perform a background check of the applying candidate. The recruiter can send feedback forms present in the system to gather candidate behavior and experience related information. With HRIS Integration, this process happens in the background without any manual intervention.


Architecture Overview Integration architecture needs to address two challenges as mentioned in earlier sections i.e. seamless integration with a variety of HRIS and speed at which it can be accomplished. This can be achieved through a modular design; integration workflow diagram above has outlined key components and sub-components of API connector. Integration workflow can be broken into three steps as: • Authentication and Connection • Sending the request • Handling the response Even though the number of HRIS to be integrated can vary, authentication method supported will be limited to a most common set, so if designed correctly this component can be reused across all the integration connectors. Many a time, request and response formats will be different for each HRIS, but template based definitions help in achieving both modular design and reusability. Below diagram represents all the reusable components from the integration case discussed above, followed by a detailed description.

Fig2: API based Integration Architecture

API Connector An API connector handles the request/response communication between two systems being integrated. It can also be a single point of contact for sending requests for different HRIS Systems, following similar integration methods, e.g. HR-XML based integrations. Key responsibilities of API connectors are to create request objects, initiate the connection, manage the state of the connection, parse and map data received in the response. API connector based integration enables loose coupling, thus allowing easy and quick modification of the integrated application as per the requirements.


Key Parameters for Seamless Implementation of API Connectors In general, below are key enablers for integration between two platforms and applies to both HRIS and non-HRIS.

Authentication Every request sent has to go through the authentication check. Integration ready system can support one or more different types of authentication protocols which consist: Basic, Network, Form and OAuth. To give an introduction of OAuth, it is an open standard for authorization which is commonly used for providing access to third party websites using Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, etc. credentials without exposing their passwords. Users can easily access the application through these credentials and gain the benefits of the application.

SOAP/REST Widely supported web service implementation methods are either Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST)

Messaging Format The majority of the systems support the following message formats - XML, HR-XML, JSON and Text (Bytes). To support XML functioning in Human Resources domain, a particular messaging format known as HR-XML was introduced. HR-XML primary function was to standardize the use of XML in Human Resources.

Batch Processing Few systems will also provide support for bulk record processing, mainly for initial user import and setup operations. Integration with such systems also needs to consider additional parameters such as support for error handling and data corrections.

Challenges There are multiple types of challenges one needs to account for in integrations, the section below outlines key implementation challenges observed in the development of API connectors for HRIS.

Keeping track of completed transactions and avoiding duplicate requests Error and exception handling is a very critical aspect of any API integrations. As request/response is based on HTTP communication, multiple factors may result in breaking the flow. A good exception handling strategy needs to be implemented to ensure request waiting for responses are cleared or handled. Many a time this leads to source creating/initiating multiple requests for the same set of parameters, resulting in duplication of data on both ends. Robust request logging mechanism and duplication handling on both side help sort this issue.


Handling and supporting variety of terminologies used across HRIS systems Due to the lack of standardization across HRIS platforms, almost every system has their own set of terminologies and formats for storing and processing data records. This applies to even most common data records and fields related to common workflows, e.g. tracking the status of candidate’s progress in an overall pre-hire workflow. Having a flexible and dynamic field mapper in place and use of design patterns helps reduce the rework and complexities, as the number of HRIS systems to be integrated grows.

Supporting multiple SOAP/REST request formats for different HRIS Even though standards such as HR-XML are available, adoption of same has been a challenge in the HCM domain. This leads to an overhead of handling the same number of different request/response formats as the number of HRIS platforms your application will be integrated with. Even though this cannot be addressed completely, generalized implementation of parser and data mapper helps achieve maximum reusability as you work on the development of multiple connector implementations.

Access to HRIS sandbox and API knowledgebase Based on the HRIS vendor, time required to setup the sandbox access varies. This results into multiple challenges such as access issues, ability to achieve one on one mapping between sandbox and DEV, QA, Stage and Production environments etc. As majority of the time gets utilized in environment setups, the ability to understand structure of the API models and functional complexities becomes critical.

Road Ahead The paper so far has focused on integrated connector development, but there are couple other approaches also being used in the industry as: • Custom build- Each product develops its own connectors. In the long run, it is cheaper. However, it’s more time consuming. • Use 3rd party Connectors- fast but must live with some limitations As a part of our research and knowledge building in this space, we will continue our evaluation for both the alternate approaches mentioned above and will invite our readers to contribute as well.


Checklist to Determine Product Integration Readiness Based on different parameters and considerations described above, overall integration readiness of your platform or any HRIS platform can be determined. As a part of developing multiple connectors, we created the below checklist. The table below helps, to determine a product’s readiness to integrate with some of the popular HRIS systems like ADP, Taleo, iCIMS, etc.

Parameters

ADP

Taleo/ TBE

iCIMS

Kenexa

Lumesse

Bullhorn

Position Manager

Generic

Authentication

Form

Form and oAuth

Basic

Form

Form

oAuth

Form

Form

Architecture

SOAP

SOAP

REST

SOAP

SOAP

Message Format

XML

XML and JSON

JSON

XML

XML

JSON

Batch Processing

Sequential

Sequential

Sequential

Sequential

Batch and Bulk

Background Integration

Yes

Sequential, Batch and Bulk Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

UI Integration

REST XML Sequential

Sequential

Yes Yes

Yes

We would keep improving on the table as we learn more. Recommendations and corrections are welcome.

References • • • • • •

https://developers.adp.com/articles/api/all/apiexplorer http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/documentation/default-1841567.html https://developer.icims.com/REST-API http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?crawler=1&uid=swg27047873 http://developer.lumesse.com/docs http://developer.bullhorn.com/doc/Bullhorn-WebServices-API.htm


About Harbinger Systems Harbinger Systems, part of Harbinger Group is a global company providing software technology services for independent software vendors and enterprises, with a specialization in product engineering. Harbinger Systems builds software solutions leveraging social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) technologies for domains such as human capital management (HCM), healthcare, e-learning, and publishing. Harbinger Systems also uses emerging technologies like big data, OpenStack, and Internet of Things (IoT) to build products for tech startups. Harbinger has extensive integration experience over multiple lifecycles of HCM products and has helped many HCM players in HR technology consolidation and cross-platform expansion. We are well equipped to build rich and integrated HR Delivery Solutions using SMAC technologies to support all your product needs. If you are interested to know more about this or have any specific query, contact us. Also, to know more about Harbinger HCM Product Engineering Services, you can visit the following links: • HCM Product Engineering Services • Experience the HCM Success Stories from Harbinger Systems

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