Azure active directory integration

Location: Chicago, IL

The Client

One of the largest and evergrowing multi-state operation that is into cultivating to retailing of cannabis and its products. Employees more than 2500 people including farmers and cultivators.

How did it help the client?

Improved data accessibility

Better
communication

Improved
Productivity

One-Stop
service

Rapid
growth

The Problem

With growing operations, the workforce grew drastically. The IT infrastructure was updated but needed to synchronize their HR System (WURK) and Active Directory to a cloud platform arose to make sure that the workforce management was smooth and real-time.

The Strategy

Our team crafted the strategy to obtain the primary Active Directory fields from WURK and the Active Directory, determine changes that have been made where the data in Azure does not match the data from WURK.. This was completed by:

Obtaining access to the WURK API, then comparing the data for all employees to the data in Azure at runtime.
Once these deltas are determined, the data fields to be changed are shown in a preview.
Once it is determined the data is acceptable, the job is run to modify and over-write the data in Azure. WURK is considered the system of record, so this is a unidirectional function.
The ability to schedule the job to run, as well as view the change logs and control access, was also added.

Challenges and how we overcame them

There were two primary challenges faced during the project

The WURK API integration with Azure was challenging as WURK is a third-party application and the client security infrastructure had many layers. We worked with WURK team and the client’s IT team to get the proper access to the significant data.
There was some uncertainty regarding the comparison logic, for the use of data from business point of view, which resulted in a lot of back-and-forth communication. We addressed these complications by involving stakeholders and conducting multiple sprints. The original comparison was to the previous day’s report to obtain deltas. It was deemed a more accurate and lower risk approach to compare directly to Azure data. While this approach overwrites changes made in Azure, the client created an internal process to ensure Azure always matches the system of record (WURK).

The Result

The firm now has an easy-to-use application to allow them to synchronize data either on a schedule, or on an ad-hoc basis. They can preview the changes, modify the schedule, verify the changes in the logs, and control access for different users. As their rapid growth continues, they can be confident that their important HR data will be accurate and available on Azure.