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Best Practices

A few guidelines for creating data imports.

  • For data retrieved or posted from an external system, SFTP and HTTPS are the only options, and TLS1.2 is required

  • As a result, all data is encrypted when moving from point-to-point

  • You can optionally encrypt data files at rest before transmitting via SFTP, then have them decrypted after being retrieved by the import job. The file extension automatically triggers the decrypt process when receiving.

  • Personally Identifiable Information (PII) should generally be kept to a minimum when transferring between systems, particularly if another system doesn't have a solid business use-case. For example, while SSN, DOB and other PII data exists in your Payroll system, there is NEVER a time that that information is needed in Workforce Management, Project Tracking, Job Costing or ERP. Should those columns be included in a data import source file, you can simply choose to not incude in any mapping, and the import files themselves will be purged after a short period.

  • While you can send partial files with changes only, it is often easier to send a full dump, or at least keep the delta fairly large. The import tools are designed to consume data efficiently, so using a delta which is too narrow can lead to issues.

  • While you can schedule imports to run multiple times per day, choose a reasonable timeline that makes sense considering where the data is coming from. For example, if consuming an employee file created by your payroll vendor, importing more than once a day (or at teh wrong time of the day) won't help if they are only creating it once. Schedule imports to run 30 minutes after the sender schedules the transmission.

  • API imports are fun, shiny and cool. But they are also harder to setup and maintain, particularly for adhoc relationships. Most of the time two systems can exchange a CSV file via SFTP with minimal effort while maintaining security. Keep in-mind the cost of setting up and maintaining a service relative to its value. On the other hand, POSTing a new hire into your SimplyWork instance on-demand could be very useful, so do what makes best business sense. We have all the tools for any solution, just pick the ones that make sense for each situation.