How to set up an SFTP Integration to Workshop

This article will help you establish an SFTP connection from your HRIS provider to Workshop, allowing you to sync your employee contacts and lists.

Workshop's SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) integration will allow you to sync data from HRIS providers such as ADP, Oracle, Workday, Paylocity, UKG and more. By integrating in this way, your employee data will sync over to Workshop on a cadence of your choosing (we recommend every 24 hours).

In your HRIS provider, you will need to configure the data that you would like to send to Workshop. At a minimum, Workshop requires the following four data fields:

1. Employee ID: This is a unique identifier tied to each employee in your HRIS provider.
2. Email: Your employee's email. Make sure this is their work email (name@yourdomain.com) and not their personal email to ensure email deliverability.
3. First name: Employee's first or given name
4. Last name: Employee's last or surname

To unlock the full potential of Workshop, we recommend sending over additional employee data beyond the required fields — as outlined in this help article — since richer data enables more dynamic segmentation, smarter insights, and deeper engagement.

Please note: Workshop is unable to process duplicate ids, emails and phone numbers in the file. Data in those columns must be unique.

Follow the steps below to configure your SFTP Integration

1. Visit Workshop's App Library
2. Select the SFTP App and click "Add App" if you haven't already
3. Navigate to the SFTP Manage Tab, which will display your SFTP credentials
4. Add this information to your provider's export settings.
5. In your provider, configure your data export to include the four required attributes listed above.
6. Add any additional attributes of data you'd like to sync over to Workshop.

If you'd like to see an example CSV containing some sample data you can find that here:

ExampleSFTPCSV.csv

Additional file guidance:

• Workshop does not require any specific naming conventions for the file
• The file should be placed in the root directory of your server
• There are no specific naming conventions for the file headers
• The file headers are not required to be in any particular order
• The 4 required fields (id, email, first_name, and last_name) can have any naming conventions you wish; these can be mapped by a Workshop CS representative

• Our Workshop CS team can update your SFTP configuration to support conditional field population for phone number, email, first name, and last name. For example, if you have a preferred first name field that is only filled out for employees who have opted in, we can set things up so that Workshop uses the preferred name when it’s available, and defaults to the legal name when it’s not.

• Additional columns can be added at will without needing to contact Workshop. Workshop will automatically update based on file changes
  • You should not remove any fields from the file once they have been added and utilized

For customers who have SMS enabled on their plans 

SFTP syncing currently does not support phone number-only contacts; every contact should include an email address as well as a phone number. The phone number column can be named as you wish, Workshop CS representatives can map this field as required.