How does Pacific Timesheet synchronize leave requests from third party systems?

Question

How do you synchronize leave requests from a third party system?

Answer

Background

There are a couple use cases where Pacific Timesheet receives leave requests from a third party system:

1. When a Human Resources system is the system of record for user leave balances, accruals, leave requests and approvals. While Pacific Timesheet might process hours data to send onto a payroll system, The customer wants to continue using their Human Resources system to manage leave requests and approvals. In this case, on a periodic basis, the Human Resources system will automatically send user leave requests to Pacific Timesheet. In turn, Pacific Timesheet will automatically populate approved leave hours onto user timesheets for submission, and additional processing for payroll and accounting.
2. A new Pacific Timesheet customers want to migrate user leave requests from Human Resources or another timesheet system to Pacific Timesheet. In this way, Pacific Timesheet seamlessly receives leave requests, creates approved leave events, schedules them in the system, and pushes these leave hours onto user timesheets for later timesheet submission, and additional processing for payroll and accounting.   

Integration Approach

Pacific Timesheet supports integration with many Human Resource and leave management systems by receiving data sent from those systems. There are a few good reasons for this approach:

1. It allows us to support leave request integration with virtually any third party system.
2. It allows the third party system to retain control of when to send leave request data.
3. It also allows the third party system to retain control over filtering leave requests sent by status, e.g. only send leave requests where status is approved.
4. It also allows the third party system to retain control of the date range of leave requests sent.
5. In the case where the third party system cannot set filtering by status, Pacific Timesheet will seamlessly receive and process leave request data:
   • If a leave request is sent with status equaling submitted (but not approved), Pacific Timesheet will create an submitted/unapproved leave request.
   • If later the leave request is sent with an updated status (approved), Pacific Timesheet will update the already existing leave request with the new status.
   • In this case, Pacific Timesheet's schedule rules will schedule and auto-populate the approve leave request hours onto the user's timesheet.

Leave Request Data Formats

Here is the data for a sample leave request using the standard Pacific Timesheet import template in a .csv format:

Employee,Employee.ID,Start Date,Start Time,End Date,End Time,Pay Code,Pay Code.ID,Requested Hours,Requested Days,Description,Submit Date,Submitter,Submitter.ID,Manager Approved,Manager Approval Date,Manager Approver,Rejected,Reject Date,Rejecter,Rejecter.ID,Reject Message,Assigned Manager Approver,Bob Admin,100,9/23/2020,,9/29/2020,,Vacation,V,40,5,Test notes,9/22/2020 6:26PM,Bob Admin,100,Yes,22-Sep,Joan Manager,,,,,,Joan Manager

Note that the leave request entry is an 8 hour Vacation request for Bob Admin on 9/29/2020. 

You can easily retrieve a requests.csv import template as follows:

1. Navigate to Leave Approvals tab (or Leave and Exception Approvals tab depending upon your system system setup).
2. Click on the Tools button (V)
3. Click on Export
4. A requests.csv data file will open in Excel or a text editor automatically on your desktop.

If you would like to see a leave request fully populated with data, setup a sample leave request with these steps:

1. Navigate to the Leave Approvals tab.
2. Click the Add button to create a new leave request.
3. Select an employee from the employee user list.
4. Complete the leave request with start and end dates, select a leave pay code, and fill in a description message.
5. Submit the leave request.
6. The leave request will display on the Leave Approvals tab and is ready for approval
7. Approve this leave request by clicking an approval level checkbox.
8. You have now created fully populated approved leave request that is ready to export.
9. Follow the steps above to export view these leave request data in the requests.csv format.   

Here is a description of all fields:

Employee
Employee is the employee full name which can be Last Name, First Name or First Name Last Name. 

Employee.ID
The employee ID.

Start Date
The start date of the leave request. The date must be in the end user's date format.

Start Time
The start time of the leave request must be specified for a partial-day request, e.g. two hours of paid time off leave that starts at 9:30AM and ends at 11:30AM. For full day leave requests, including a leave request for a date range of full-day leave requests, no start time is required.

End Date
The end date of the leave request. The date must be in the end user's date format.

End Time
The end time of the leave request must be specified for a partial-day request, e.g. two hours of paid time off leave that starts at 9:30AM and ends at 11:30AM. For full day leave requests, including a leave request for a date range of full-day leave requests, no end time is required.

Pay Code
The name of the leave request pay code.

Pay Code.ID
The pay code ID of the leave request pay code.

Requested Hours
The total hours of the leave request. If the leave request is for a number of days, requested hours would be the summarized amount of those days.

Requested Days
For a leave request that span multiple days, requested days is the total number of days for that leave request. Pacific Timesheet uses scheduled work days set in a user profile when it schedules a multi-day leave request. For example, for an employee whose scheduled work days are Monday through Friday, for a two-week request where the start date is on a Monday of week one, and the end date is on Friday of week two, Pacific Timesheet will schedule leave request hours only on workdays and not on weekend days.     

Description
A descriptive note about the leave request recorded by the submitter, e.g. "I really need a vacation day."

Submit Date
The date on which the leave request was submitted. Dates must be in the date format of end the user.

Submitter
The user name submitting the request. This can be Full Name, e.g. "Bob Admin," or Last Name, First Name, e.g. "Admin, Bob," or the user ID.

Submitter.ID
The submitter's ID.

Manager Approved
A status field with a value of "Yes" if the request is manager approved, and "No"if the request is not approved.

Manager Approval Date
A date field. Date values must be in the date format of end the user.

Manager Approver
The user name approving the request. This can be Full Name, e.g. "Bob Admin," or Last Name, First Name, e.g. "Admin, Bob," or the user ID.

Rejected
A status field with a value of "Yes" if the request is rejected, and "No"if the request is not rejected. A leave request with rejected equaling "Yes" will not become a scheduled leave event and will not auto-populate leave request hours onto a user's timesheet. If the rejected status of a previously-approved leave request is modified from "No" to "Yes," the leave request will become unscheduled and any auto-populated leave request hours will be deleted from the user's timesheets.  

Reject Date
A date field. When a leave request status is rejected, reject date is the date when the leave request is rejected. If reject date status was originally "No," there will be no reject date and this value will be blank. Date values must be in the date format of end the user.

Rejecter
The user name rejecting the request. This can be Full Name, e.g. "Bob Admin," or Last Name, First Name, e.g. "Admin, Bob," or the user ID.

Rejecter.ID
The rejecter ID.

Reject Message
A descriptive message stating the reason for the leave request rejection.

Assigned Manager Approver
The user name assigned to approve the request. This can be Full Name, e.g. "Bob Admin," or Last Name, First Name, e.g. "Admin, Bob," or the user ID.

How it works

Manual Leave Request Data Imports

You can manually import leave request data when you are ready as follows:

1. Prepare your requests.csv import file.
2. Navigate to the Leave Approvals tab.
3. Click on the Tools button (V)
4. Click on Import
5. Choose you requests import file.
6. Click Okay to run the import
    

Auto-Import Leave Request Data

If the auto-import tool is not setup in your Pacific Timesheet system, navigate to System>General>Integration>Auto-Import Directory. Then click Help in the upper right of that web page . The  context-sensitive help topic "Auto-Import Directory" will open in a new tab. Reach out to Pacific Timesheet support for to enable credentials for your auto-import directory. Once your auto-import tool is setup, you can send leave request data to Pacific Timesheet on any schedule.

Auto-import Directory Notes

1. The auto-import directory feature requires that your source system can create a requests.csv file with the file format outlined above and the file naming convention outlined in the Auto-Import Directory help page. If your source system cannot automatically create this file, you will need to run an export report and import it manually.  
2. The requests.csv auto-import file will automatically be processed after you send it to the auto-import directory.  
3. Error handling will appear in an events section of the system administrators home page.
4. You can also review details of any errors in the System Event Log report.
5. When running this report you use dynamic filters on the left of the report page to filter in only auto-import log data.
6. If it is not already setup in your system, you can create a System Event Log report that filters in only auto-import log data.

Notes for integrating leave request data from BambooHR