Every workplace is subject to an ever-changing technological landscape, and oftentimes it becomes important to synchronize employee information across multiple tools managed by the HR department. Ideally, you will want to import as much data as possible from your HRIS to other tools automatically, simply because importing the data manually is a time-consuming, and laborious process.

The primary step in getting started with Ally.io is onboarding users and teams to the system. You can automate this step using our integration with popular Human Resource Information Systems such as SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, UltiPro, Gusto, and Rippling HR among others, that fetches relevant information from your HRIS, and updates this information dynamically.

You can save yourself from the hassle of inundating your IT helpdesk with requests for provisioning, deprovisioning, or updating employee information.

Ally’s HRIS integration works on the principle of Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). SFTP is a network protocol for file transfer that uses encryption algorithms to securely move data to a server, and makes the file unreadable during this process. Since authentication is involved in SFTP, unauthorized file access is prevented during the transfer process. This provides organizations a higher level of file transfer protection. There are two methods for authenticating connections — password authentication, and key authentication. Ally.io uses password authentication wherein you can simply use the encrypted credentials provided by us to ensure a secure file transfer from your system to our server.

The first step is to import employee data from your HRIS and drop this file at a secure location (which is our SFTP server). We will fetch this file, and provision users and teams into your Ally.io account automatically. The file location, and data during transfer is encrypted, ensuring top-notch security.

To keep this information current, you can schedule a task that will automatically import personnel information from your HRIS, and drop this file to our server. For example, once everyday at 9AM, the entire employee information should be exported, and saved in the specified file location. By doing this, for every user and/or team addition and/or deletion, or any updates, the information will be synchronized dynamically from your HRIS to Ally.io.

Please ensure that the user and team file includes the exact labels of Ally’s standard header fields, and the file should be in CSV format.

Users

Teams

Ally.io will consider all the headers other than the default ones as custom fields for the user. When the feed from your HRIS provider has these custom fields, we will add these automatically to the user record. For example, Employee ID, Joining Date, and likewise.

Custom fields for users will be treated as text fields, date, or boolean fields as per the format. While exporting users in Ally.io, all the custom fields will be included.

HRIS integration is available only for Enterprise customers. If you would like to have this enabled for your organization please reach out to [email protected] with the request. Alternately, you can reach out to your CSM to have this enabled for your organization.

Here's how the setup process would look like if you decide to enable the SFTP integration with Ally.io

1. Once you reach out to your CSM, the team at Ally.io would create the folder and host it. (If you prefer Ally.io to host the file.)

2. Once the folder is created, the credentials for that SFTP folder will be shared with your organization's representative. Using these credentials, you would be able to access that folder.

Note: If you choose to host the SFTP folder, then we would require you to share this information with us in order to contact the folder. The other steps below remain the same.

3. The next step would be to share a sample file of users or teams for your organization. Refer to the format that we are expecting for users and teams. Note that if the headers are different, we can map your headers to ours in the backend but the values that we expect need to be in the format as shown here.

4. The Ally team will configure your folder credentials in the backend while we verify the format of the files you share.

5. Before you can start dropping the files in the SFTP folder, we would require the email recipients who would require to be notified when SFTP uploads happen and also the frequency at which you would like us to pull the data from the SFTP folder into Ally.

Note: Usually organizations prefer once-a-day sync. If the customer is dropping the user and team files manually, they have to drop the files in the /local folder in the SFTP folder.

Note: The email recipients would need to be users of Ally in order to receive SFTP updates. Any email address that is not associated with any user in Ally will not be able to receive these notifications.

6. Once the email recipients and the sync frequency areconfigured, you can drop the files into the SFTP folders and the sync will happen.

1. Can I use my SFTP server instead of one hosted by Ally.io?

Ally.io can create the SFTP server location that’s hosted by us to drop files or can use any existing SFTP server that’s hosted by your organization.

2. What is the supported file format?

Both the user & team import files should be UTF-8 encoded.

3. When does the user and team data synchronize?

The user & team import will happen once a day for every organization. Please reach out to [email protected] or your CSM to better understand the schedule.

4. How to export users?

On the top-right corner of the tabular summary, you will find an option to export users. A mail will be sent to the administrator for downloading the report.

5. What happens if a previously imported Ally user no longer appears in a new CSV upload?

A new user account is created but is in the Deactivated state.