IFS Cloud and Workday HCM integration

What moves between them

Supplier invoices, supplier master records, and purchase orders flow from Workday SOAP into IFS Cloud as posting proposals, mapped to the IFS GL accounts and cost centers configured per customer. Worker records from Workday populate as customer records in IFS Cloud. Cost centers, organizations, and GL account hierarchies are synchronized bidirectionally so allocations remain valid on both sides. All pulls are polling-based on a customer-defined schedule, typically aligned with procurement and payroll cycles.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector maintains separate OAuth2 credentials for IFS Cloud REST (with refresh logic when tokens age past 50 minutes) and separate SOAP ISU credentials for Workday. IFS Cloud mutations require reading the record first to capture the ETag header, then sending PATCH or POST with that ETag to satisfy optimistic concurrency rules. Workday supplier data is pulled via SOAP with optional date filters for incremental extraction, then mapped to IFS Cloud posting proposals using customer-provided GL account and company code mappings. Because both systems lack webhooks, ml-connector polls on a fixed schedule (default daily, configurable per flow). Supplier and cost-center reference data aligns in both directions to prevent downstream posting failures. Workday Supplier_Invoices does not support delta extraction, so all invoices are queried on each poll and deduplicated by external invoice ID before posting into IFS. Rate-limit backoff with jitter applies to both systems.

A real-world example

A mid-sized manufacturing company runs IFS Cloud for production, procurement, and finance, and Workday HCM for workforce management and payroll. Before integration, the procurement team received supplier invoices in Workday, exported them manually, and re-entered them into IFS Cloud with GL account allocation, a process prone to errors and taking 4-6 hours per week. Worker changes in Workday required a separate sync into IFS for headcount and cost-center tracking. With Workday and IFS Cloud connected, supplier invoices and purchase orders automatically flow from Workday into IFS posting proposals, allocated to the correct GL accounts and cost centers, and worker records keep both systems aligned. The manual re-entry step vanishes, and procurement month-end reconciliation runs in minutes instead of days.

What you can do

• •Sync supplier master data and invoices from Workday SOAP into IFS Cloud posting proposals with GL account and cost center mapping.
• •Keep worker records and organizational hierarchies aligned between Workday and IFS Cloud for coordinated planning.
• •Map Workday cost centers to IFS Cloud cost codes so labor and allocation postings land on valid dimensions.
• •Handle Workday SOAP authentication, IFS Cloud OAuth2, ETag concurrency headers, and rate-limit backoff on both sides.
• •Poll both systems on a configurable schedule since neither offers native webhooks, with deduplication and full audit trail on every record.

Questions

Which direction does data move between IFS Cloud and Workday HCM?

The primary flow is Workday to IFS Cloud. Supplier data, invoices, purchase orders, and worker records move from Workday into IFS Cloud. Cost centers, GL accounts, and organizational dimensions are aligned bidirectionally so procurement and payroll allocations remain valid on both sides. GL entries posted in IFS Cloud are read-only and do not flow back to Workday.

Why does IFS Cloud require ETag headers on mutations, and how does ml-connector handle them?

IFS Cloud uses ETag headers to enforce optimistic concurrency control, preventing simultaneous edits from overwriting each other. ml-connector reads the record first to capture its ETag value, then includes that ETag in the PATCH or POST header when writing the record back. If the record changed between read and write, IFS returns an error and ml-connector retries with a fresh read.

Since both Workday and IFS Cloud lack native webhooks, how does ml-connector keep data fresh?

ml-connector polls both systems on a configurable schedule, typically aligned with procurement and payroll cycles (e.g., daily or twice daily). Workday supports date-filtered queries for incremental pulls, while Workday Supplier_Invoices requires full-table scans and deduplication by invoice ID. IFS Cloud supports OData filters on modified timestamps for efficient incremental pulls.