Empowering Power Users with UKG Connectors for Microsoft Power Platform

UKG has a longstanding collaboration with Microsoft, seamlessly integrating our UKG Pro® suite with Teams, Shifts, and other Office365 applications. We're taking our collaboration to the next level by extending the UKG FleX platform (powering UKG Pro) to Microsoft Power Platform. With expansion  mutual customers can effortlessly create customized employee experiences tailored to their business.

Empowering Employee-Centric HCM

Our vision is to help organizations become a Great Place to Work by offering people-centric HCM technology. With no-code/low-code premium connectors and templates, UKG Pro and Microsoft Power Platform users can now easily build custom apps, extensions, and workflows. This combination allows HR and business users to address current employee needs and prepare for future workplace dynamics independently putting power in the hands of UKG Pro users. 

Addressing Unique Organizational Challenges

We know you may face challenges in realizing the value from your HCM suite investments due to the unique and evolving needs of your employees. HR and workforce management workflows, such as employee onboarding and engagement surveys, require constant change. Additionally, meeting evolving employee expectations and needs in today’s changing work patterns is a constant organizational challenge. At the same time, traditional IT solutions lack agility and cost-effectiveness, leading to compromises or costly custom solutions that hinder the user experience and put in place solutions that may not be maintainable. This is where Microsoft Power Platform comes in. 

The power of UKG and Microsoft

Microsoft Power Platform offers low-code tools to build apps, workflows, and data analytics. UKG FleX provides an adaptable API framework with artificial intelligence for the UKG Pro suite, ensuring organizations benefit from innovations continually. Bringing these together, allows HR users like you to shape dynamic HR processes with little to no IT involvement. 

How does it work? 

UKG connectors in Power Platform let you to insert UKG data into applications, workflows, and chat bots that you build using Microsofts Power Platform. The platform  combines data and actions from the UKG Pro suite, Microsoft applications as well as other third-party vendors with published connectors. 

Imagine a workflow built to automatically punch someone out for break when they post a message in Teams. Or how about enabling your employees to check their schedule from a Power App inside your own employee portal, outside of UKG Pro. With Power Platform and UKG connectors, it’s easy to do!

UKG connectors act as a user-friendly interface for UKG APIs, eliminating the need for expertise. Each connector exposes specific API actions, but you don't need to worry about the technical details—the connector handles it for you. This is a huge win for many reasons:

1. Time to Value – Organizations can leverage out-of-the-box UKG connectors that give ready-to-use solutions with just few clicks to configure them.
2. No Technical Debt – By avoiding custom code, organizations leverage smooth upgrades in the future and a lower technical debt load.
3. Sustainability – Solutions built atop UKG connectors leverage our backward compatible APIs. 

Accelerating Innovation with the Best

Gartner recognized Microsoft as a Leader in Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms in 2023. Power Platform's easy-to-use, low-code tools empower you to create impactful solutions. UKG Pro has also been named a Leader in Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises.

Power Platform with UKG connectors allows "citizen developers" to deliver cost-effective, tailor-made innovation, aligning technology with unique employee needs and value propositions further contributing to creating a Great Place to Work.

We’re only getting started, and plan to continually release new connectors, factoring in your feedback.    

What’s available? 

UKG has created two connectors for Power Platform: 

• UKG Pro WFM Authentication – Simplifies the steps to retrieve and manage an access token for Pro WFM APIs and includes one action: Get Access Token.
• UKG Pro WFM Employee Self Service – Simplifies access to features typically made available to front-line employees and includes multiple actions:
  • Get Schedule
  • Get Last Timestamp
  • Timestamp
  • Get Timecard

In addition to UKG connectors, we’ve created a sample flow and a sample app that demonstrate how to use our connectors in two sample use cases. Read the “Getting Started” section to learn more about these samples and how they were built.

Upon certification, Microsoft lists connectors and templates on their connector reference pages. Each connector has a page of its own that incudes links to documentation and references to templates where the connector is used. Below is an example of what the page will look like for the Pro WFM Employee Self Service connector. 

UKG plans to enhance these connectors in the coming months. We’ll deliver connectors for non-employee self service actions in Pro WFM and our first connector for Pro HCM. Each connector will support a set of actions and triggers within a specific business domain, such as HR, payroll, talent acquisition, timekeeping, and scheduling. Multiple connectors for our suite makes it easier to find the action you need when you need it. 

Getting Started 

The quickest way to get started using our connectors is to see them being applied inside a solution. We’ve created a video that shows two UKG connectors inside a simple flow that allows an employee to submit a timestamp/punch from within Microsoft Teams. Watch the video to see how to define the flow and then see the flow in action! 

We’ve also created a sample app using our connectors. In the app, we use all the actions available in the Pro WFM Employee Self Service connector. Each action is used to build the employee-facing, front-end experience you see in the screenshot below. 

Building an app using Power Platform is different than building a flow, but the use of the UKG connectors is mostly the same. In fact, apps are typically built on top of flows just like the flow described in the video linked above – with some modifications. Review the list below to understand how flows and connectors are used differently in an app vs. the flow shown in the video: 

1. Flows used in apps are initiated by the app instead of manually, so the initial/trigger step is PowerApps, as shown in the screenshot below. 

2. Connectors used in an app get their dynamic data (like username and password) from the app instead of the flow. The screenshot below shows dynamic data coming from an app. 

3. Apps and flows are connected via a relationship between an object in the app and the flow. For example, the screenshot below shows a snippet of code attached to a login button in the app. It sets a variable called “accessToken” to the value returned by the GenerateToken workflow (and passes the GenerateToken workflow the username and password collected in the app).  

4. Flows send data to apps via a “Return value(s) to Power Pages” step in the flow. The screenshot below shows an example where the access_token response from the connector is stored in the “accessToken” value sent back to the app. This is the value that gets stored in the variable set in item #3. 

5. All flows used in an app must be assigned to the app and configured as described above. The screenshot below shows the list of flows used in our sample employee-facing app.  

For detailed information on building apps, refer to the Microsoft Power Platform documentation.

If you have questions or feedback on the UKG connectors for Power Platform, reach out to us at  [email protected].