Employee Provisioning with a Unified API
September 28, 2025
Employee provisioning is one of the most common integration use cases in B2B SaaS. When a new employee joins a company, downstream systems need to provision accounts, assign groups, and enforce access controls. When they leave, access must be revoked.
Instead of building one-off connectors for each HR system, a unified API abstracts away provider differences and delivers normalized employee data in real time. That allows your product to automate provisioning without maintaining custom logic per vendor.
Why Provisioning Requires Integrations
HR systems like Workday, BambooHR, or SuccessFactors are the source of truth for employee records. But most downstream systems—IT management, collaboration tools, access control, analytics—need to stay in sync. Common triggers include:
- Onboarding: automatically create accounts when a new hire is added.
- Offboarding: revoke access when an employee leaves or is terminated.
- Transitions: move a candidate from "accepted offer" to "active employee."
Without a unified API, each HR platform requires a separate integration, with its own schema, authentication, and webhook behaviors. Over time, this creates high maintenance overhead and brittle provisioning workflows.
Normalized Employee Data
Unified.to's API provides a normalized schema across 185+ HRIS platforms. Core objects include:
- Employee: identity, status, organizational placement (fields:
name,emails,manager_id,compensation). - Group: teams, departments, or business units (
name,type). - Company: legal entity tied to the employee (
id,name,domain). - Location: physical office or region (
id,name,address). - Device: assets assigned for provisioning and tracking (
serial_number,device_type).
These fields cover the majority of provisioning workflows. Custom objects or provider-specific data can be accessed via passthrough endpoints when needed.
Real-Time Data Flow
Unified.to monitors HRIS platforms via native webhooks (when available) or managed polling. When an employee record is created or updated:
- Data is normalized and delivered in real time.
- Downstream systems consume the event via webhook or API.
- Optional write support allows provisioning metadata (e.g., device IDs) to sync back to the HR system.
Unlike ETL or iPaaS tools, Unified.to never caches or stores employee data. Every call fetches live data from the source, ensuring accuracy for provisioning and access control.
CRUD and Write Support
Most provisioning scenarios require more than just reads. Unified.to's API supports full CRUD for employee objects across many platforms:
- Create: add new employees programmatically.
- Update: change group, manager, or role assignments.
- Delete: deactivate or remove employees.
Write access is supported for core objects like employee, group, and device, depending on the integration.
Supported Platforms
Unified.to supports enterprise HRIS (Workday, SuccessFactors, ADP Workforce Now, UKG, Ceridian), mid-market HRIS (BambooHR, HiBob, Rippling, Namely, Paylocity), and SMB HRIS (BreatheHR, Alexis, Ameego, Canvas). In total, there are 188+ pre-built HR and Directory integrations, all normalized into a single employee schema with zero maintenance.
See the full list of supported integrations
Why This Matters for Product Teams
For product managers and platform engineers, the benefits are clear:
- Faster delivery: build once, support many HR platforms.
- Lower maintenance: Unified.to manages tokens, retries, and API changes.
- Real-time accuracy: provisioning decisions are based on live data, not cached snapshots.
- Scalability: one model covers enterprise and SMB systems, supporting your full customer base.
Provisioning is mission-critical: access must be immediate, accurate, and secure. A unified API reduces the integration backlog while ensuring provisioning workflows remain consistent across customers.
Ready to see how employee provisioning works at scale? Book a demo with our team or get stared with a free 30-day trial.