How to Sync Paylocity Manager Attributes with Okta Workflows

IT admins face a myriad of challenges when it comes to maintaining efficient and streamlined systems. In the spirit of MacGyver, ScrapTech is here to provide you with inventive solutions to overcome obstacles that can arise in your day-to-day work.

In this edition, we'll dive into syncing Paylocity Manager attributes using Okta Workflows. This process will allow for seamless data transfer and accuracy across your organization, enhancement of team organization, and the saving of valuable time and resources.

Okta Workflows is a powerful automation platform that streamlines identity management tasks, enabling you to automate complex processes without writing code. By using Workflows, you can create custom, automated flows that improve efficiency and reduce manual work.

Workflows are an integral part of the Okta Identity Cloud, allowing you to extend the capabilities of your identity management infrastructure with ease.

Using Paylocity as your HRIS (Human Resources Information System) and Okta for identity management, you've likely encountered a gap in manager information syncing. Paylocity supports sending quite a bit of data to the Okta platform, but not always in a way that is easy to work with.

While Paylocity provides a manager value, the value is the manager's external ID, which is unique only to Paylocity. This makes it difficult to distribute manager information to your various apps, affecting team organization and access to relevant information.

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To solve this issue, you can use Okta Workflows to automate the process of identifying the external manager ID value and updating each employee's manager information in Okta. 

1. List all users assigned to the Paylocity app within Okta Workflows. To start, create a workflow that fetches all users assigned to the Paylocity app in your organization. This will provide you with a comprehensive list of users whose manager information needs updating. 

2. Identify the external Manager ID value for each user. Next, extract the manager's external ID value from the Paylocity data for each user. This information is crucial to match the manager to their respective employees in Okta.

3. Run a list against all other users in the app to find a match. With the external Manager ID values, iterate through the list of users to find matches between employee and manager records. This process will help you identify the correct manager for each employee in Okta.

4. Use the matched manager's Okta information to set the user's manager. Once you've identified the correct manager for each employee, use the manager's Okta profile information to update the employee's manager attribute. This will allow manager's information to be properly synced between Paylocity and Okta.

5. Create a table of records for each user. Organize your data by creating a table that includes each user's information, along with their manager's Okta profile details. This will help you keep track of the manager-employee relationships you've established in Okta.

6. Run each person through an if/else block to update the manager's information. Finally, create a conditional if/else block in the workflow to iterate through each user. If the user's manager information needs to be updated, the block will execute the update. If the manager's information is already correct, the block will skip the user.

By implementing this solution, you can efficiently sync manager information from Paylocity to Okta, streamlining the process of updating employee-manager relationships and enhancing team organization.

This Okta Workflows fix saves time and resources for IT admins, allowing you to focus on other tasks while ensuring accurate manager data across your organization.