Hello All,
I recently implemented the SuccessFactors spoke and would like to share my findings and knowledge with you as very little information is available out there.
I have tried to be descriptive so please be patient with the length of the article.
Installation:
You need an Integration Hub subscription to install the spoke, please check if the spoke is part of your subscription or not.
Before you set up the credentials, please ensure to check docs.servicenow.com for the dependencies. Some of the properties might not exist in the system and needs to be manually created.
Credentials setup:
Once the dependencies are done and the plugin(s) has been installed, you would be able to see the spoke in the flow designer.
As of the time of creating the article, the spoke only supports Basic authentication.
You can set up the credentials in two ways:
- Going to Connections and Credentials -> Connection & Credential Aliases -> SuccessFactors_Comp_Emp, SuccessFactors_OData
- Flow Designer -> Connections -> SuccessFactors_Comp_Emp, SuccessFactors_OData
You can also set up the SFTP credentials if needed.
Please remember to follow the format of credentials:
For OData:
Username: <username>@<SAP-SuccessFactors-CompanyID>. e.g. apiadmin@servicenowT1
Password: The SuccessFactors password
For URL: please ensure to provide the API URL and not the login URL of the customer. You can refer to: https://userapps.support.sap.com/sap/support/knowledge/en/2215682
For CompEmp:
You will need to create credentials in Connections & Credentials, the username and password will be the same as that of the login in SuccessFactors.
Flow and Sub-Flow setup:
The flow and sub-flows that come from OOTB are read-only. You need to make a copy and make changes if you need to do any customizations. I'd recommend sticking to a naming convention to make it easier to track the custom changes.
The "Run SuccessFactors Integration Flow" is the flow that "pulls" the data from SuccessFactors to ServiceNow. The other two flows are to push To-Do data from ServiceNow to SuccessFactors.
Data Pull from SuccessFactors (SF) to ServiceNow (SN):
The "Run SuccessFactors Integration Flow" is the flow that "pulls" the data from SuccessFactors to ServiceNow.
The flow pulls the below data OOTB:
- Department
- Location
- Job Profile (Job classification in SF)
- Worker profile
- Job History Including Secondary Assignments - This sub-flow is only in the spoke and not available in the OOTB HR Integration (Legacy)
- To-Do
Staging tables and actual SN tables:
The spoke pulls the data from SF and puts them only in a staging table, it does not touch the SN tables.
In the backend, navigate to SuccessFactors Spoke and you can find the staging tables:
For department and location, the OOTB transform map can work directly if you didn't make any changes to the respective SN tables.
However, for the rest, the OOTB transform map only sends the data to another custom table, so you need to deactivate it and make your own transform map. You can use the OOTB transform map as a reference.
Ensure that you are marking the coalesce fields. Some of the fields might require you to make a script to make it work if the format in SF and SN are different.
I suggest testing the connection and pulling the data before making the new transform map to ensure that the right data is being pulled from SF.
Issues noted in the OOTB spoke:
At the time of writing this article, I noted some issues in the system and you might have to make modifications due to them.
Sub-flow to pull the worker and job info data:
- The sub-flow has the determine uniqueness marked, what this does is that only new user records are updated and any update on an existing user record is not transformed if the staging table still has the record of that user on it.
- To fix it, remove the determines uniqueness from the sub-flow (you will need to copy the sub-flow and update the reference to it in any other flow/sub-flows that call it.
- The job history and secondary job sub-flow pull the primary and secondary job information, however, it does not mark the primary and secondary jobs correctly. I had a case opened with the support team for this. You also might have to script the primary position on the HR profile as the spoke does not provide a script for this.
Pull To-Dos:
The flow that pulls the user and Org data also pulls the To-dos. You will need to create your own transform map (target table: Pulled To-do [sn_hr_integrations_todo_inbound])
A few of the pulled to-dos were not having the SF URL in them, I had opened a case for this issue too.
Push To-Do:
The OOTB provides a staging table for the spoke to take the To-dos from SN and push them to SF. However, you will need to write Business Rules/Flows to populate the staging table based on your requirements.
Eg. you might make a flow to populate the staging table with the approval and HR task type to-do. Please note, for the URL: you might want to simply re-direct to the Employee Center To-do page. Individual to-do won't be possible.
You can use the OOTB transform map.
Guidance for the custom transform maps:
| Object | Source Table | Target Table |
| Job Profile | SuccessFactors Job Profile Staging Table [sn_successfactors_job_profile] | Job Profile [sn_hr_core_job_profile] |
| Worker profile | SuccessFactors Worker Profiles Staging Table [sn_successfactors_worker_profiles] | HR Profile [sn_hr_core_profile] |
| Job History | SuccessFactors Employee Job Information and History Staging Table [sn_successfactors_employee_job_information_and_history] | Job [sn_hr_core_job] |
| Inbound To-Do | SuccessFactors Inbound Todos Staging Table [sn_successfactors_inbound_todos] | Pulled To-do [sn_hr_integrations_todo_inbound] |
Further Actions:
You can use the OOTB actions in the spoke to expand the integration between the two systems.
You can fetch more data such as the time-off details of the employee and create a conversation in the Virtual Agent/Utilize this in the HR services.
However, please note that only the action is available (the API pulls the data) you will still need to create the conversations/HR Services and the flow to carry out the actions.
I hope that this article helps you with the implementation of the spoke. It does bring out more capabilities compared to the legacy integration and could go a long way to improve the data sync and employee experience.
Hi Apurva,
We are fetching data from successfactors and transforming that data into ServiceNow(HR Profile table).
While running the complete load, we are getting below error. We are using Successfactors Spoke and copied one of the data stream action(Retrieve Job Profiles) which is available OOB. There are around 55k records that needs to be updated in ServiceNow.
Could you please share any information around this. Thanks.!
Regards,
Ankur
Hi @Apurva16
please find the architectural diagram
@Apurva16 : After following all the steps mentioned in https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/yokohama-it-asset-management/page/product/software-asset-mana...
The Oauth token flow for both oData and soap are successfully completed. But while running the retrieve workers subflow to test if data can be pulled from successfactor or not we are getting the following error
what could be the possible issue here, could this be because of the incorrect role based permissions given to the user in successfactors?
@Apurva16 I'm having this problem. The problem is in the "Login into SuccessFactors" subflow. The configuration is done according to the step-by-step ServiceNow documentation, and the credentials are correct. However, these errors occur, and when the action runs a soap test, it returns a 504 error.
Can you help me, please., with your comments o recommendation.
@JigyasaArorwere you able to solve that problem?
regards.
