Employee and role import

Employee and role import

This article describes how to set up an employee and role import in the Spend Cloud. The combination of both imports automates user management in the Spend Cloud.

Employee Import

In organizations with a large number of employees, hiring and departure of employees occur regularly. As these changes are generally tracked in a personnel system, this source can serve as a basis for making the same changes in the Spend Cloud. The employee import feature in the Spend Cloud allows for the automation of such mutations.

For the employee import, a complete list of all active employees must be provided from the source. The following principles are applied based on the source input:
  1. Adding new employees
    Employees present in the source but not in the Spend Cloud are added to the Spend Cloud.
  2. Deactivating existing employees
    Employees not provided by the source anymore are deactivated in the Spend Cloud.
  3. Making changes to existing employees
    Changes in existing employee data are implemented in the Spend Cloud.*
*The username is the key field for synchronizing employee data. Changing the username in the source will create a new employee in the Spend Cloud.

Executing an employee import

The execution of the employee import depends on the source from which the employees are obtained. In some cases, a web service link between the source system and the Spend Cloud can be used. For more information on web service link possibilities, contact your Visma | ProActive Consultant, Visma | ProActive Support, or your implementation partner. In other cases, a CSV file can be generated from the source system. This CSV file can be imported manually or automatically. If automatic import is desired, the file should be written to an sFTP location provided by Visma | ProActive at regular intervals. 

If you want more information about creating an importplanning, refer to this article.

Data employee import

To import employee accounts, the Spend Cloud expects the following data:
  1. First name
  2. Prefix
  3. Last name*
  4. Email address*
  5. Username*
  6. Number**
The fields last name, email address, and username are mandatory. It's crucial that the email address and username are unique for each user. The username serves as the key field in the Spend Cloud for synchronizing employee data. An initial step in configuring the employee import in the Spend Cloud is to determine whether the way usernames and email addresses are registered per employee in the source aligns with the current setup in the Spend Cloud. Discuss the possibilities with your Visma | ProActive Consultant, Visma | ProActive Support, or your implementation partner.

*These fields are mandatory to fill in the Spend Cloud to execute the import.
**if using the expense claims module, this field should be filled with an employee number or creditor number in the Spend Cloud)

Role Import

When an organization has various layers, there is usually a large number of employees. If lower-level departments also play a role in different expense processes, numerous mutations in roles for different employees occur due to hiring and departures. The role import feature in the Spend Cloud supports in managing this quantity of mutations.

Role Import Assumptions
The following assumptions are used for the role import:

Roles based on a job profile
Ensure that all existing roles in the Spend Cloud are based on a job profile. Roles based solely on a permission set can lead to deviations in the authorities of employees. Using job profiles keeps the entire role transparent and workable.

Add function
The Spend Cloud only offers an addition function for the role import. In practice, this means:
  1. The Spend Cloud will create roles based on a job profile when there are new records in the supply from the source.
  2. Deactivating a role for an employee indirectly occurs in the Spend Cloud by making the employee passive using the employee synchronization at the time of departure (see employee synchronization guide).
  3. If an employee has a changed role or location within the current organization (e.g., moving in terms of permissions from location A to location B), the Spend Cloud will create a new role for the employee at the new location but leave the role at the old location. This may need to be manually removed.

Outstanding actions
If an employee still has outstanding actions, the Spend Cloud will notify, and these actions must be handled by the administration.

Importing roles
The manner in which the role import can take place in the Spend Cloud depends on the source from which the roles are obtained. In some cases, a web service link between the source system and the Spend Cloud can be used. For more information on web service link possibilities, contact your Visma | ProActive Consultant, Visma | ProActive Support, or your implementation partner. In other cases, a CSV file can be generated from the source system. This CSV file can be imported manually or automatically. If automatic import is desired, the file should be written to an sFTP location provided by Visma | ProActive at regular intervals. 

Data role import
To import employee roles, the Spend Cloud expects the following data:
  1. Name or number of the Organizational Unit (depending on your setup)
  2. Employee username
  3. Code of the job profile
The method of supplying the roles is important. In Figure 1, it is indicated that both Heiko Bonenkamp (hbonenkamp) and Lars van der Meer (lvandermeer) should be assigned or currently have job profiles in the Spend Cloud. By doing so, Heiko Bonenkamp obtains permissions within both the Invoice Processing module and the Cash & Card module. Currently, Heiko has two different roles with two separate job profiles (in the Spend Cloud) per location. If the job profiles per employee are sourced from an external system, there is a possibility that this source may offer one job profile code per employee per employment (location). Therefore, it is advised to configure the job profiles in the Spend Cloud in a way that within one job profile, access is granted to all modules that an employee needs to have access to, as indicated in Figure 3.

Figure 1

Figure 2


The manner of supplying the roles is crucial. The file should be provided in such a way that there are no exceptions between the way employees and job profiles are registered in the source compared to the Spend Cloud. Consider an employee who, in practice, has different permissions than the function is actually based on.

An initial step in configuring employee roles in the Spend Cloud is determining whether it is feasible to standardize roles with job profiles. We recommend providing a file of employees with functions and locations during configuration so that a comparison can be made between the file from the source and the current setup of the Spend Cloud.

Depending on your current setup, current job profiles need to be converted into new specific profiles. Discuss the possibilities with your Visma | ProActive Consultant, Visma | ProActive Support Consultancy or your implementation partner.






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