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How do I set up, test, and manage Web Hooks via Payroll classic?

Updated

Available for the following Payroll plans: Employment Lite, Employment Plus, Employment Unlimited
Available for the following Payroll classic plans: Standard, Premium

Web Hooks are one of a few ways web applications can communicate with each other and allow you to send real-time data from one application to another whenever an event occurs.

The platform sends this data online from the original application through to the receiving application that handles the data.

This exchange of data happens over the web through a Web Hook URL provided by the receiving application, which acts essentially as a phone number that the other application can call when an event happens.

You can use the Payroll Web Hooks feature to add a new Web Hook to your organisation's payroll platform and then test out this data source to make sure it works as intended. You can also use this feature to edit any information if it changes and delete a record if it is no longer required.

Getting started

How do I add a Web Hook?
  1. Click the Business Settings menu.
  2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
  3. Click the Web Hooks button.
  4. Click the Add button.
    Hook__UK__1.jpg
  5. Complete the following fields:
    • Description
    • URL
    • Events
  6. Click the Save button.
    Hook__UK__2.jpg
How do I enable clock-in/clock-out on Web Hooks?
  1. Click the Business Settings menu.
  2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
  3. Click the Web Hooks button.
  4. Tick ‌the Enable clock in/clock out web hooks checkbox.enable_web_hooks.jpg

Daily activities

How do I test a Web Hook?
  1. Click the Business Settings menu.
  2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
  3. Click the Web Hooks button.
  4. Click the Test button.
    Hook__UK__3.jpg
  5. Select the required event and click the Test Web Hook button.
    Hook__UK__4.jpg

Editing data

How do I edit a Web Hook?
  1. Click the Business Settings menu.
  2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
  3. Click the Web Hooks button.
  4. Click the Web Hook that needs to be edited.
    Hook__UK__5.jpg
  5. Make the required changed and click the Save button.
    Hook__UK__6.jpg

Removing data

How do I delete a Web Hook?
  1. Click the Business Settings menu.
  2. Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
  3. Click the Web Hooks button.
  4. Click the Delete button.
    Hook__UK__7.jpg
  5. Click the OK button.
    Hook__UK__8.jpg

Further information

Available Web Hook events

The Web Hook events with message data types sent that are currently available are:

Data is sent inside a wrapper class (Microsoft.AspNet.WebHooks.WebHookWorkItem), with the relevant data inside the Notification array.

Retry intervals

If the call to the web hook URL does not return a success result (for example, a HTTP 200 or HTTP 201), we will retry the sync at increasingly high delays.

  • First attempt: Immediate.
  • Retry 1: 1 minute after first attempt.
  • Retry 2: 2 minutes after previous retry.
  • Retry 3: 4 minutes after previous retry.
  • Retry 4: 8 minutes after previous retry.
  • Retry 5: 15 minutes after previous retry.
  • Retry 6: 30 minutes after previous retry.
  • Retry 7: 1 hour after previous retry.

If the web hook attempt is not successful after seven retries, we will not re-attempt the sync.

Event message verification

We include Web Hook message verification with each web hook registration by computed a sha256 hash of the message payload using HMAC and web hook secret. Each event will contain the hashed value within the header response MS-Signature.

You can use an application like https://www.freeformatter.com/hmac-generator.html to test the resulting hash.

Please note the hash is sensitive to any whitespace in the request content. It is recommended that you read the content as a string without any formatting, then pass it through an HMAC hash generator library along with your secret.

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