Introduction
Why Employee Mid-lifecycle Automation is Important
Employee mid-lifecycle changes, such as promotions, departmental transfers, or name changes, are common in any growing organization. Automating these transitions is essential to ensure smooth operations, maintain system security, and optimize productivity. Without automation, such changes require manual updates to multiple systems, increasing the risk of human error and security lapses.
The main challenges addressed by employee mid-lifecycle automation include:
- Keeping Systems in Sync: When an employee’s personal or job-related details change, such as a name change or role update, these updates need to be reflected across key organizational platforms, such as HRMS, Slack and G Suite, to avoid discrepancies.
- Adjusting Employee Access: When employees move between departments or roles, their access to specific apps and groups must be updated to match their new responsibilities, while unnecessary access should be revoked to maintain security.
Torii fully automates these processes, ensuring timely updates, reducing manual workload, and minimizing security risks.
Now, let's explore best practices for optimizing these use cases and how to implement them effectively in Torii.
Keeping Systems in Sync
Best Practices
1. Identify key changes to track.
Focus on the changes that matter most to your organization. Common examples include:
- Name changes: Ensure an employee's last name is updated across all apps when they get married.
- Department and title changes: Automate promotions and internal transfers.
- Location changes: Particularly important for organizations with multiple offices or frequent employee relocations.
2. Rely on your primary employee data source.
Monitor changes in your primary employee source. Typically, this will be an HRMS, as it holds the most up-to-date employee information.
3. Determine which systems need to stay in sync.
Prioritize platforms used by the majority of your employees where accurate data visibility is essential. Common examples include:
- Google Workspace
- Slack
- Salesforce
Configure workflow in Torii
1. Select "User attribute changed" trigger.
Note that you will need to configure a separate workflow for each type of change you want to automate.
For this example, we will focus on name changes.
2. Configure the trigger.
- Select your HRMS (e.g., Hibob) as the application where the change occurs.
- Choose the attribute you want to monitor. In this case, select "Hibob Last Name."
When selecting a specific user attribute, such as first name, last name, start date and more, the "Changed from" and "Changed to" dropdowns will default to "Anything." This allows you to monitor any change rather than a specific change.
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3. Add "Update" or "Edit user" actions.
- For each system you want to keep in sync, add "Update" or "Edit User" actions.
- Ensure the target fields are populated with the appropriate personalization token:
[Trigger.User.Attribute-Changes.New-Hibob-Last-Name]
Note that two personalization tokens will be available: one for the value before the change and one for the value after the change.
Use the "Trigger.User.Attribute-Changes.New-.." token to propagate updates to other systems with the new value. Use the "Trigger.User.Attribute-Changes.Previous-.." token if you need to send notifications or handle updates related to the old value (will be shown in the next example).
Now you are all set!
This is the suggested workflow for propagating name changes to critical organizational platforms.
Now, whenever an employee’s last name is updated in Hibob, this change will be automatically propagated to Google, Slack, and Salesforce, ensuring that the employee’s name is updated consistently across all platforms.
Adjusting Employee Access
Best Practices
1. Identify common promotions and career transitions
Focus on the most frequent career paths within your organization that require changes in access. For instance, if junior employees often start as Marketing interns and are later promoted to the Sales team, prioritize automating this transition.
2. Adjust app access.
For each career path, clearly identify which apps need to be deprovisioned and which new apps should be granted. Ensure that the transitions are smooth and align with the employee’s new role.
3. Update group and channel assignments.
In addition to app access, make sure to manage group memberships, distribution lists, and channel assignments. Automate the process of adding and removing employees from relevant groups and channels to reflect their new responsibilities.
4. Notify stakeholders about organizational changes.
Send notifications to relevant stakeholders about employee changes. This ensures that managers and team leads are informed and can take any necessary actions related to the changes.
Configure workflow in Torii
1. Select "User attribute changed" trigger.
You will need to configure a separate workflow for each path you want to automate.
For this example, we will focus on a scenario in which an employee moves from Marketing department to Sales.
2. Configure the trigger to monitor specific department changes.
- Select your HRMS (e.g., Hibob) or other app (e.g. IDP) as the application where the change occurs.
- Choose the attribute you want to monitor. In this case, select "Hibob Department."
- Define a specific path you want to automate by selecting values in "Changed from" and "Changed to" dropdowns. Let's select Marketing and Sales.
3. Add actions to adjust app access.
Deprovision employees from apps they no longer need, and provision access to apps required for their new role. Let's remove access to Hubspot and add access to Salesforce.
4. Update group and channel assignments.
Add actions to assign employees to relevant groups and channels based on their new department and remove them from those they no longer need. For instance, if an employee is transitioning to the Sales department, remove them from Google Marketing groups and distribution lists, as well as from Slack channels associated with Marketing. Simultaneously, add them to the appropriate Sales groups and channels.
5. Notify stakeholders about department changes.
Send updates that an employee moved from one department to another, using personalization tokens:
[Trigger.User.Attribute-Changes.Previous-<Attribute>]
[Trigger.User.Attribute-Changes.New-<Attribute>]
Congratulations, you are done!
This is the suggested workflow for adjusting access following employee transition from Marketing to Sales.
FAQ
1. Can I automate several promotion paths in a single workflow?
Not currently. Since Torii does not yet support branching (If/Else actions) in "User attribute changed" workflows, you will need to create separate workflows for each scenario. For example, one workflow would trigger for a department change from Marketing to Sales, and another would trigger for Business Development to Sales.
2. How quickly will the changes be captured?
Changes are captured when an integration is synced.
For Google org unit that we sync in real time, a change will be captured faster.
For example, if a customer sets up a workflow with the trigger 'When a Google Workspace org unit is changed', the workflow will run within an hour of the change.
3. Which fields can I configure in the trigger? Can I capture changes for any field I want?
You can monitor changes to user custom fields, that come from connected IDPs, HRMS and few other systems (e.g. Salesforce).
For example:
- Hibob department
- BambooHR title
- Google workspace user manager
and more.
On top of that, we also support monitoring changes for names, specifically:
- First name
- Last name
- Full name (combination of the 2 above)
4. Do I need to specify the exact change (e.g. changed from X to Y), or can I capture any change?
To capture any change to the selected attribute, configure the trigger to Changed from Anything and Changed to Anything .
Please note that “Anything” also includes “Nothing”, meaning it will apply if:
- An existing user had no value for the attribute initially.
- An existing user had a value for the attribute and then it was deleted.