Advanced Settings
Establishing a Connection
The Lyftron Provider for SAP SuccessFactors communicates to SAP SuccessFactors over the OData API. By default, it is enabled. However, if you need to provide additional permissions, please follow the steps from SAP laid out in their support here.
Connecting to SAPSuccessFactors
You can authenticate to SAP SuccessFactors using Basic authentication or OAuth with SAML assertion.
Basic Authentication
You must provide values for the following properties to successfully authenticate to SAP SuccessFactors. Note that the provider will reuse the session opened by SAP SuccessFactors using cookies. Which means that your credentials will be used only on the first request to open the session. After that, cookies returned from SAP SuccessFactors will be used for authentication.- Url, set this to the url of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed here.
- User, set this to the username of your account.
- Password, set this to the password of your account.
- CompanyId, set this to the unique identifier of your company.
OAuth Authentication
You must provide values for the following properties, which will be used to get the access token.
- Url, set this to the url of the server hosting Success Factors. Some of the servers are listed here.
- User, set this to the username of your account.
- CompanyId, set this to the unique identifier of your company.
- OAuthClientId, set this to the API Key that was generated in API Center.
- OAuthClientSecret, the X.509 private key used to sign SAML assertion. The private key can be found in the certificate you downloaded in Registering your OAuth Client Application.
- InitiateOAuth, set this to GETANDREFRESH.
Configuring Authentication In SAP SuccessFactors
SAP SuccessFactors requires some setup in order to communicate over the Lyftron API. This section covers how to configure authentication in the OData API.
Basic Authentication
Once OData is enabled, you must grant access to the API to activate Basic Auth for a given user.
Granting Permission for an RBP System
- Assign the permission in Administrator Permissions > Manage Integration Tools > Allow Admin to Access OData API through Basic Authentication.
Granting Permission for a User-based System
- Click Administrative Privileges > Integration Tools, and select Allow Admin to Access OData API through Basic Authentication.
- On the Managing Administrative Privilege page, select the Employee Export and Employee Import checkboxes to grant those permissions to the given user.
Authentication using OAuth
Granting Permission for an RBP System
- From the admin menu Manage Permission Roles, select the desired role for which you want to add the permission. As a best practice, create role named "API Administrator".
- Under the Manage Integration Tools link, select the Manage OAuth2 Client Applications checkbox.
- After you have done this, you will see a link, Manage OAuth2 Client Applications under the Company Settings category in the new admin tools, and under Integration Tools in the older administration tools interface.
Granting Permission for a User-based System
- From the Admin Menu click Manage Security > Administrative Privileges. For the user you are logged in as, look under Integration Tools and check the box under Access to OAuth 2 Management.
- After you have done this, you will see a link under Integration Tools to where you can register your OAuth client.
Registering your OAuth Client Application
- To register an OAuth client, log into your application instance with an administrator account. From the Admin menu, click Manage OAuth2 Client Applications > Register New Client Application.
- After you register an OAuth client, any user of the registered client can connect to SuccessFactors HCM Suite using this method.
Customizing the SSL Configuration
By default, the provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats to do so.
Connecting Through a Firewall or Proxy
HTTP Proxies
To connect through the Windows system proxy, you do not need to set any additional connection properties. To connect to other proxies, set ProxyAutoDetect to false.
In addition, to authenticate to an HTTP proxy, set ProxyAuthScheme, ProxyUser, and ProxyPassword, in addition to ProxyServer and ProxyPort.
Other Proxies
Set the following properties:
- To use a proxy-based firewall, set FirewallType, FirewallServer, and FirewallPort.
- To tunnel the connection, set FirewallType to TUNNEL.
- To authenticate, specify FirewallUser and FirewallPassword.
- To authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, additionally set FirewallType to SOCKS5.
Troubleshooting the Connection
To show provider activity from query execution to network traffic, use Logfile and Verbosity. The examples of common connection errors below show how to use these properties to get more context. Contact the support team for help tracing the source of an error or circumventing a performance issue.
- Authentication errors: Typically, recording a Logfile at Verbosity 4 is necessary to get full details on an authentication error.
- Queries time out: A server that takes too long to respond will exceed the provider's client-side timeout. Often, setting the Timeout property to a higher value will avoid a connection error. Another option is to disable the timeout by setting the property to 0. Setting Verbosity to 2 will show where the time is being spent.
- The certificate presented by the server cannot be validated: This error indicates that the provider cannot validate the server's certificate through the chain of trust. If you are using a self-signed certificate, there is only one certificate in the chain.
To resolve this error, you must verify yourself that the certificate can be trusted and specify to the provider that you trust the certificate. One way you can specify that you trust a certificate is to add the certificate to the trusted system store; another is to set SSLServerCert.