How to Sync HRIS Data from Paylocity

How to sync HRIS data from Paylocity

Jared Ellis avatar
Written by Jared Ellis
Updated over a week ago

What can I learn from this page?

How to sync HRIS data from Paylocity

Who is this guide for?

Account Admins

Note: Paylocity uses our full import process. When your data syncs, any employees not included in your data file will become inactive as former employees, with their End Date set to the import date. See: Importing your user data to Culture Amp for more information.

Culture Amp can import your employee data directly from Paylocity. The set-up process is straightforward and can usually be completed in one sitting without technical support. You can set up your integration to sync data manually (as triggered by an admin user) or automatically daily.

Before you begin

Log into Paylocity and request a vendor integration via the the Paylocity marketplace. detailed instructions on how to do this can be found here.

Step 1: Connect your Paylocity Account

  1. Sign in to Culture Amp with an account that has Account Administrator access.

  2. Navigate to your Settings > Data Integrations page in the Culture Amp platform. Select the Paylocity tile.

  3. Enter your Paylocity Company Id, and select validate details.

    3._connect_to_paylocity.png

  4. You now have a connection between Paylocity and Culture Amp. If you are unable to validate the connection, please ensure you are using the correct company id and that you have submitted a request to Paylocity to allow Culture amp access to your company details

    We now have the ability to connect to more than 1 Company ID for those users that have multiple company ID's for users in different geographical locations

Step 2: Optional - Other companies to sync from

We now have the ability to connect to more than 1 Company ID for those users that have multiple company IDs for users in different geographical locations. If you would like to add multiple company IDs, click the “validate companies” button after entering the company ID in the textbox.

Step 3: Choose the fields to sync

Custom field mapping

  • If you would like to customize the mapping of fields between Paylocity and CultureAmp, please follow the HRIS Custom Mapping Instructions.

  • Alternatively, you can use the default mapping explained in the Default field mapping section below.

Default field mapping

The following Mandatory fields will be automatically imported into Culture Amp:

  • Name

  • Email

  • Employee Id

  • Manager Email

  • Preferred name

  • Date of birth

  • Start date

  • End date

You can also select any additional fields that you would like to be imported into Culture Amp from the list of additional fields. Any custom fields created will automatically appear in the list of additional fields and be available for selection.

Alternatively, you can use the 'Advanced Mapping' feature (beta) for custom mapping of fields between the two platforms:

Advanced_Mapping.png

Important: When using the using the 'Advanced Mapping' feature, if you have the Employee Hierarchy feature enabled on your account with the managers email addresses as your manager identifier, the manager identifier demographic must be titled as 'Manager Email' in your Account Demographics.


You'll need to add the Culture Amp field called 'Manager ID' as a field in Advanced Mapping (this will be automatically linked to the Paylocity field called 'Supervisor Employee Id). The platform then uses their ID's to automatically populate their email addresses in the 'Manager Email' field in Culture Amp for hierarchy validation purposes.
Note, the platform also pulls in the 'Manager' name info from the Manager ID too and that demographic field will therefore be reflected in the import summary.

Please note that Pay Type and Pay Group fields in Paylocity are part of their "sensitive information" category, which is not accessible via our integration.

If you wish to store that type of information for your users in Culture Amp, you'll need to consider managing those demographics manually via Excel/CSV user imports or look into the possibility of creating a custom field in one of the non sensitive categories in Paylocity to house that data and include the custom field in your data sync.

Step 4: Optional - Create a custom field to exclude specific people

If you'd like to exclude specific people, create a custom field in Paylocity called "Exclude from Culture Amp." During the sync process, any employees with this field set to "Yes" will be excluded from being synced into Culture Amp.

Step 5: Set Sync settings and Save

We recommend leaving daily syncs disabled for now. The best practice is first to do a manual sync where you get to review how the integration data will change your employee data before confirming those changes. After you have confirmed that data is importing correctly, you can enable daily syncs.

  1. Enter the email address of a person that should be contacted in case of any integration errors.

  2. Select the Save settings button to save the integration

    7._save_settings.png

Step 6: Manually Sync Data

You can now sync your user data into Culture Amp, which replaces the old data in Culture Amp with the new data from Paylocity.

Even if you have turned on auto-syncs, we strongly recommend running a manual sync after setting up your integration to confirm everything is working correctly. You’ll be prompted to do this when you save your integration. Otherwise, you can run a manual sync by navigating to the Settings > Data Integrations page and clicking the Sync Button or via your Settings > Users > Import Users

From here, Culture Amp will step you through the same verification process as if you were uploading users via the Import Users process. Once you’ve reviewed your data and clicked ‘Import data’, the sync will run in the background and could take anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes. No data will be imported until you click ‘Import data’.


Troubleshooting integration issues

Switching from CSV uploads to the integration

If you already have existing data in Culture Amp as a result of doing CSV uploads or using a different integration, then there are a few things to pay attention to:

When doing your first sync via the Paylocity integration, you could see errors related to matching employees. Please review the troubleshooting information in Duplicate employees in Culture Amp section below.

If your additional demographics have a different name in Paylocity than they are currently titled in Culture Amp, they will be created as a new demographic after your first sync. We would recommend keeping this in mind if you trend results in surveys for demographic groups over time. When you run your next survey, you can reach out to the Culture Amp product support team to do a once-off mapping of the previous demographic name to the new demographic name from HiBob. To avoid confusion from users about which demographic to use, we would recommend navigating to the Settings -> Account Demographics page and deleting the old demographics after your first sync (this will not impact any previous survey results or comparisons).

Duplicate employees in Culture Amp

Culture Amp will match employees in Paylocity to employees in Culture Amp based on the employee's email address. If the same employee has a different email address in Culture Amp and Paylocity, duplicate employees will be created in Culture Amp. To reconcile the duplicates, please follow the steps below.

Resolving duplicates before changes have been applied to Culture Amp

Feedback on all employees to be created/updated/deactivated will be provided on the ‘Review’ screen during the first sync. Ideally, you would then abort the sync and update employee emails in Culture Amp to match Paylocity data.

In Culture Amp, employees' email addresses can be updated via a user modal: Go to the Users page and click on the name of the employee you want to update, then update the employee's email. Repeat for all duplicated employees. After that, you can try integration sync again.

Resolving duplicates after changes have been applied to Culture Amp

If you did not address the duplicates on the first sync and duplicate employees have been created, it is possible to resolve the duplicates by:

  • Deactivate the newest employee and remove email from it, e.g., by assigning a fake ID/email to allow saving.

  • Update existing user records to match employee emails in HiBob. This will allow us to retain the history on the existing employee record.

Sync blocked to protect employee privacy

Your automated daily sync might be blocked if Culture Amp suspects that one of your employees may have had their details mixed up with another. You will receive a notification of this via email.

If a combination of an employee's Name, Date of Birth, or Email is changed, the sync will be blocked. This prevents an employee from accidentally accessing another employee's private information, such as performance reviews.

If you've intentionally changed the employee's details, you can run a manual sync to push through the change. Simply click 'Import data' from the Users page and select 'Sync'. Culture Amp will guide you through the rest.

Investigating and resolving any data issues

Once the first integration has been performed, and integration history has been created, the first step when investigating data issues is to check the import summary for your most recent import. This will provide information about the state of your integration.

To find this information, go to Account Administration > Import History and select your most recent import.

If there was a problem with your last import, you will either be able to view errors on this page, or you will be prompted to run a manual sync to identify any problems.

Need further help? Contact our Culture Amp Support team via email: support@cultureamp.com or ask to speak with a support specialist during your live chat conversation.

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