APIs offer the most secure, reliable, and robust method of connectivity between applications.

However, APIs aren’t always an option.

A software vendor may not offer APIs or support the endpoints you need; a vendor may force you to enter into a cost-prohibitive partnership agreement to access their APIs; your security team may be relatively unfamiliar with API-based integrations and hasn't approved of their use—and the list goes on.

With these situations in mind, we’ve decided to roll out Merge SFTP.

Using Merge SFTP, your customers can automatically export reports from a system on a regular cadence (e.g., once a day) and add them to a Merge-hosted SFTP server securely. The data in the reports are then normalized into our Common Models and can be fetched and added to your product.

You can read on to learn how, exactly, Merge SFTP can help your customers sync data via files automatically or manually.

How Merge SFTP works

The process of using Merge SFTP—which is now available on HiBob, Workday, SAP Success Factors, and ADP—largely mirrors that of our API integrations.

When a customer accesses Merge Link in your product, they’ll be prompted to enter their SFTP information for a specific report in an application (e.g., a Statement of Work report in Workday). As part of this flow, the customer will also define the schedule at which the report gets exported and sent to our SFTP server.

Alternatively, your customers can manually upload CSV files via Merge Link. 

This process is more labor-intensive to complete, but it lets you get started immediately.

For either Merge SFTP or manual uploads, you can also leverage our Field Mapping feature to sync additional types of data from a report to our Common Models.

Related: 3 newly-launched Field Mapping features that let you sync custom data more easily

Examples of using Merge SFTP

Here are just a few ways Merge SFTP can support your customers’ HRIS and ATS integration needs:

Automated user provisioning 

A customer can send a report from their HRIS every day with the new hires that’ve joined in the last 24 hours, along with their associated information (e.g., job title). 

Then, based on the logic a customer implements in your product, your platform can add the new hires as users and assign them the right set of permissions, automatically.

Automated user deprovisioning

A customer can send a daily report from their HRIS that includes all of the employees that have been marked as inactive. Based on this information, your product can remove these employees automatically —preventing them from accessing sensitive data and taking unwanted actions.

Related: A guide to automated provisioning

Analyze employee compensation effectively

Say you offer a solution that lets HR teams analyze employee compensation so that they can make informed comp adjustments over time. 

To ensure your product uses accurate, up-to-date compensation data, you can help customers add employee compensation reports from their HRISs on a monthly basis. 

Through that report, any comp changes for an employee can be reflected in your product automatically, which includes the in-product dashboards the customer uses.

Onboard new hires onto your HR software quickly

Imagine you provide an HRIS solution and want to help customers add new hires to your platform so that they can kickstart the onboarding process easily and quickly.

To help facilitate this, you can enable any customer to send daily reports from their ATS with the candidates who’ve been marked as hired within the last 24 hours. These candidates can then auto-populate in the customer's instance of your HRIS.

Access Merge SFTP and manual file uploads with ease

Whether you’re on our Professional or Enterprise plan, you can leverage Merge SFTP and manual file uploads at no additional cost.

Simply connect with your dedicated customer success manager to activate the feature. They can also walk you through its setup and provide prompt support should any bugs come up.

Finally, we’re constantly adding new HRIS and ATS integrations to Merge SFTP, so if we don’t support the integrations you want today, we likely will soon.

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