UKG Webhooks provide real-time notifications for events in your UKG Pro system, using HTTP callbacks to designated endpoints. It eliminates the need for manual checks, ensuring your workflows stay efficient and your systems remain updated.
This article takes a closer look at the key capabilities, best practices, and benefits of UKG Webhooks and how they help organizations drive better event responses and improve overall efficiency.
Key Takeaways
- UKG Webhooks provide real-time notifications for events in the UKG Pro system, enhancing operational efficiency by eliminating the need for constant polling.
- The application features Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for managing webhook subscriptions, enhancing security, and providing flexible permissions based on user roles.
- Adhering to best practices for webhook management, such as monitoring retention times and implementing security measures, is essential for maintaining accurate and reliable notifications.
Understanding UKG Webhooks Technology
UKG Webhooks allow organizations to receive real-time notifications about specific events in their UKG Pro solution. Using HTTP callbacks, webhooks facilitate near-instantaneous communication between systems by enabling immediate responses to these events. When a particular event is triggered within UKG Pro, a notification is sent to a specified endpoint, alerting the relevant systems or personnel without delay.
The beauty of webhooks lies in their efficiency. Instead of constantly polling a server to check for updates, webhooks push notifications as soon as an event occurs. This reduces server load and enhances operational responsiveness, enabling organizations to act quickly on critical information. UKG Webhooks enable organizations to automate workflows, facilitate real-time data synchronization, and drive proactive decision-making.
Exploring the functionalities and setup of UKG Webhooks reveals how this technology can transform your organization. Initially, it is essential to get an overview of the UKG Webhooks application and its capabilities.
Getting Started with Webhooks in UKG
The UKG Webhooks application offers a robust platform for users to create and manage subscriptions for event notifications. You can tailor your notifications to suit your organization’s needs, keeping you informed about critical changes and updates. Additionally, the application allows you to deactivate or reactivate subscriptions as needed, providing flexibility in managing your notifications.
One of the standout features of the UKG Webhooks application is its incorporation of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). This allows different user roles within your organization to have specific permissions, enhancing security and ensuring only authorized personnel can modify webhook subscriptions. Assigning roles and permissions helps control who can create, modify, or delete subscriptions, safeguarding your system’s integrity.
The UKG Webhooks application simplifies managing subscriptions. With a user-friendly interface and intuitive tools, creating new subscriptions or adjusting existing ones is seamless. This level of control and customization empowers your organization to stay agile and responsive in today’s fast-paced environment.
Navigating the Webhooks Landscape
Webhooks have revolutionized the way information is passed between systems, enabling data transfer in near real-time. When an event is triggered within an application, webhooks send an HTTP POST request to a specified endpoint, communicating critical information immediately. This capability is particularly valuable in the UKG Pro solution, where real-time notifications can significantly enhance operational efficiency and responsiveness.
Configuring webhooks in UKG Pro allows you to subscribe to specific events and receive notifications instantly. This setup allows for seamless integration between systems, ensuring your organization is always up-to-date with the latest changes and updates.
What Are Webhooks?
Webhooks facilitate real-time communication between software systems by automatically sending data when specific events occur. This automation eliminates the need for manual intervention, ensuring updates are promptly communicated to the relevant systems. Within the UKG Pro Workforce Management API, web services allow for the subscription to events and near real-time notifications, making it easier to keep systems synchronized and up-to-date.
The integration capabilities of UKG webhooks are a testament to their efficiency. Event-driven notifications from webhooks keep your systems in sync, reducing the latency associated with traditional polling methods. This seamless integration is crucial for maintaining the flow of information across various platforms within your organization.
Benefits of Using Webhooks
Unlike traditional polling methods, which require constant server requests to check for updates, webhooks provide immediate notifications without continuous checking. This reduces server load and ensures that critical information is communicated as soon as it becomes available. The efficiency of webhooks is in their ability to push notifications in real time, enabling faster response times and more agile operations.
Webhooks are a modern solution for event notifications, eliminating the delays and inefficiencies associated with traditional polling methods. By receiving real-time notifications, organizations can promptly act on critical information, improving decision-making processes and responsiveness. Using webhooks helps organizations reduce latency, enhance efficiency, and gain immediate access to important updates.
Types of Events You Can Subscribe To
UKG Webhooks allow you to subscribe to various events, enabling near-instantaneous notifications upon their occurrence. This functionality is powered by specific triggers within the UKG Pro system, ensuring notifications are sent only when relevant events occur. Subscribing to these events keeps you informed about critical changes and updates within your organization.
The UKG Webhooks application offers a catalog of events that users can subscribe to, each linked with specific triggers within the system. Additionally, wildcard subscriptions allow users to easily subscribe to groups of events based on patterns, providing flexibility in managing notifications.
Let’s explore the different types of various events you can subscribe to, starting with employee events.
Employee Events
Employee-related events in UKG Webhooks are triggered by actions such as hiring, name changes, and job updates. These events allow you to monitor changes to personal information, job status, and termination details, ensuring that your company database is always up-to-date. Examples of employee events include updates to names, addresses, employment status, and changes in job roles triggered by various actions.
Specific events like ‘EmployeePersonNameChangeEvent’ occur when an employee’s name fields change, while ‘EmployeeTerminationChangeEvent’ is triggered when an employee’s termination data is added or modified within the system. By subscribing to these events, you can ensure that any changes to employee information are promptly communicated to the relevant systems and personnel.
Document Events
Document events in UKG Webhooks notify users about changes in document generation or updates within the platform. These events cover notifications related to generating and updating various documents, ensuring that your organization is always informed about the latest changes. Subscribing to document events helps you stay on top of document creation, modification, and deletion, ensuring your records are always accurate and up-to-date.
Whether a new report is generated or an important document is updated, document events ensure that you’re notified immediately. This real-time communication helps maintain the integrity of your records and ensures that all stakeholders are informed about critical changes as they happen.
Account and Organization Events
Account and organization events cover changes in account configurations, organizational updates, and platform settings. These events can trigger specific notifications that inform users about updates to user roles, account settings, and other administrative changes. Subscribing to these events ensures that any changes in your organization’s structure or settings are promptly communicated.
By leveraging UKG Webhooks, users can stay informed about modifications in platform configurations and other administrative updates, enhancing awareness of changes that could impact the organization’s operations. This real-time notification system ensures that all relevant stakeholders are aware of important updates as soon as they occur.
Setting Up UKG Webhooks
Setting up UKG Webhooks involves creating an endpoint URL that is publicly accessible and capable of handling incoming HTTP POST requests from UKG.
Ensuring this endpoint is correctly configured is crucial to avoid webhook delivery failures, which can occur due to network issues, misconfigured endpoints, or errors in payload validation. Monitoring and promptly investigating failed delivery attempts helps identify and rectify the root cause, ensuring reliable webhook notifications.
Prerequisites and Tools
Before you can start using the UKG Webhooks application, you’ll need a company access code, which is essential for logging into the application. Create this access code by navigating to the System Configuration section within the Pro suite and following the specific steps outlined. Additionally, ensure you have the tools and platform configuration to handle webhook requests effectively.
The right tools and prerequisites are the first step towards a successful webhook setup. With these in place, you can create your webhook subscription and receive real-time notifications.
Creating a Webhook Subscription
Creating a webhook subscription involves defining the endpoint URL that will receive incoming messages from UKG. This URL should be correctly configured and accessible to ensure that it can handle incoming webhook notifications effectively. You can customize webhook requests with free-form headers to suit your specific needs during the subscription creation process.
Setting up a new webhook subscription within the UKG Webhooks application involves specifying the endpoint URL and optionally customizing the request headers to ensure your notifications are correctly received and processed.
Testing Your Webhook Setup
Testing your webhook endpoint is crucial to confirm that it can effectively receive notifications. Regularly testing your webhook endpoints ensures they function correctly and can handle incoming notifications. Typically, webhook data is transmitted in JSON format, requiring proper parsing to extract relevant information for processing.
After creating your webhook subscription, manage it by testing, deactivating, and reactivating as needed to keep your setup up-to-date and functioning as expected.
Managing Webhook Notifications
Testing your subscription’s endpoint directly through the UKG Webhooks application is essential to ensure proper notification receipt.
Effective webhook notification management requires robust endpoint availability monitoring to ensure that notifications are processed without interruptions. Marking webhook subscriptions inactive during extensive database updates can help avoid receiving unnecessary notifications.
In this section, we’ll explore how to receive and parse webhook data, handle security with HMAC secrets, and deal with failures and retries to ensure your webhook notifications are reliable and secure.
Receiving and Parsing Webhook Data
To effectively receive webhook data, ensure that the target URL is secured using HTTPS. When parsing webhook data, it’s essential to use the correct method to access the incoming JSON payload, such as accessing it via php://input in PHP. This ensures that the data is accurately extracted and processed for further use.
Properly receiving and parsing webhook data is crucial for maintaining the integrity and reliability of your notifications. Following these best practices ensures your webhook data is handled efficiently and securely.
Handling Security with HMAC Secret
Security in UKG Webhooks is maintained through the implementation of Hash-Based Message Authentication Codes (HMAC).
When setting up a webhook subscription, you can specify an HMAC secret for message verification, ensuring that the messages you receive are authentic. HMAC utilizes both the message and a secret key to create a unique hash, which helps verify the integrity and authenticity of the webhook message.
Including an HMAC secret when adding a new webhook subscription enhances the security of your webhook notifications and ensures that only legitimate messages are processed.
Dealing with Failures and Retries
Several scenarios might prevent events from being delivered. These include trigger removal, disablement, SQL access issues, database restores, and mass updates.
A retry mechanism can help recover from temporary failures in webhook deliveries, ensuring important notifications are not lost. Monitoring the delivery status and promptly addressing any issues helps maintain the reliability of your webhook notifications.
Effectively handling failures and retries is crucial for maintaining the integrity of your webhook-based integrations. Implementing these strategies ensures that notifications are always reliable and timely.
Best Practices for UKG Webhooks
Establishing best practices for UKG Webhooks enhances reliability and performance, ensuring your webhook notifications are always timely and accurate.
These best practices include monitoring webhook retention time, implementing secondary polling synchronization, ensuring robust security measures, and more.
Monitoring Webhook Retention Time
UKG Webhooks retains event notifications for 14 days, allowing users to retrieve missed notifications within this window.
Understanding this retention period enables organizations to manage their data processing effectively and minimize the risk of missing critical notifications. Regular reviews of webhook retention time help maintain compliance and data integrity.
Monitoring webhook retention time ensures all notifications are processed promptly, and no critical information is lost.
Implementing Secondary Polling Synchronization
Secondary polling synchronization or nightly reports are suggested methods for safeguarding against missed events in critical integrations.
This secondary mechanism acts as a fail-safe, capturing events that might have gone unnoticed due to temporary failures or other issues. Secondary polling synchronization ensures your system remains resilient and no important events are overlooked.
Ensuring Security Measures
Implementing authentication protocols for webhook endpoints is crucial to prevent unauthorized access. Incorporating role-based access control (RBAC) allows for different user privileges in managing webhook subscriptions, enhancing security. The functionality of UKG Webhooks is dependent on the enablement of UKG Pro events, meaning that certain events may not be delivered if they are disabled or removed.
Best practices for securing your webhook endpoints include robust authentication mechanisms and careful management of user access privileges. These measures ensure the security and integrity of your webhook notifications.
Rate Limits and Usage Restrictions
UKG Pro implements an API rate limiting system where limits are generally enforced over one-minute intervals.
When the request rate exceeds the acceptable limit, a 429 status code is returned, indicating that the client should lower the frequency of requests. Understanding these rate limits is crucial for managing the usage and performance of your applications within UKG Pro.
In the following subsections, we’ll explore how to understand and manage rate limits effectively to ensure the smooth and efficient operation of your webhook notifications.
Understanding Rate Limiting
The UKG Pro API employs a specific rate-limiting strategy to regulate the number of requests made to its endpoints. While specific numeric rate limit values are not provided, limits can vary depending on the endpoint being accessed.
Understanding these limits helps you optimize the performance of your applications and avoid exceeding the allowable request rate. Managing within these rate limits ensures that your webhook notifications are delivered reliably and without interruption.
Managing Rate Limits Effectively
Handling 429 responses is crucial when managing within rate limits.
A 429 response indicates that the user has exceeded the rate limit and should wait before making further requests. UKG may introduce a ‘Retry-after’ header to indicate the recommended wait time after a 429 status response.
Checking for this header helps determine when to make future requests, ensure compliance with rate limits, and maintain the smooth operation of your webhook notifications.
Keeping Up with API Updates
Staying informed about API updates is crucial for maintaining effective integrations and ensuring compliance with the latest standards.
Regularly reviewing the latest version and key updates of the UKG Pro Workforce Management API, including the user API key and the customer API key, helps optimize the performance and functionality of your applications.
In this section, we’ll discuss the latest version of the API and how to access developer resources to stay current with the latest changes.
Latest Version and Key Updates
The latest version of the UKG Pro Workforce Management API is 2024. This version was released after the training data from October 2023.R1. This update includes new resources, such as new recruiting API resources and a new Universal Device Manager domain.
Additionally, the 2024.R1 update introduces new Combined Paycodes for Timekeeping API resources and enhancements to existing operations.
One significant change is the retirement of the AppKey. Staying informed about these updates ensures your applications remain compliant and take advantage of the latest improvements.
Accessing Developer Resources
You can access the UKG Pro Developer Hub through the UKG Developer website.
To register as a user on the Developer Hub, go to the website, then, sign up. Access to the Developer Hub is free, and it provides you with the tools and resources needed to stay up-to-date with the latest UKG updates.
Regularly reviewing the Developer Hub and release notes ensures you are always informed about the most recent changes and improvements.
How Can We Help?
Whether you need help assessing your existing UKG system setup, additional support navigating complex integrations between UKG and other external systems, or an extra hand identifying critical recommendations for product enhancement, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our senior-level UKG consultants have the skills and experience to understand your critical project needs and ensure your internal teams are prepared for continuous improvement and innovation.
For more information about our UKG consultants or to get started on a project with our team of expert consultants, contact us today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are UKG Webhooks?
UKG Webhooks provide organizations with real-time notifications about specific events within the UKG Pro solution, facilitating immediate responses to enhance operational efficiency.
How do I set up a webhook in UKG Pro?
To set up a webhook in UKG Pro, create an endpoint URL to handle incoming HTTP POST requests, configure this endpoint in the UKG Webhooks application, and conduct a test to verify its functionality.
What types of events can I subscribe to with UKG Webhooks?
You can subscribe to various events such as employee-related events (hiring, termination), document events (creation, modification), and account and organization events (user role updates, account settings). This flexibility allows you to stay informed about key changes within your organization.
How can I ensure the security of my webhook notifications?
To ensure the security of your webhook notifications, use Hash-Based Message Authentication Codes (HMAC) for message verification, secure data transmission with HTTPS, and implement role-based access control (RBAC). These measures will significantly enhance your webhook security.
What should I do if my webhook notifications fail to deliver?
To address failed webhook notifications, implement a retry mechanism to recover from temporary issues and ensure you monitor delivery status to investigate and resolve any problems quickly.