Summary: User Sync is an automation tool that keeps your Speakap network aligned with your HR records. This guide is for admins, IT, and HR teams who want to understand what User Sync does: automatic invitations, profile updates, departmental transfers, and account deletions.
Why use User Sync?
Good user management is the foundation of a successful Speakap network. Manual management works fine for smaller organizations, but larger companies need something that scales. User Sync removes the work of manually inviting every new hire and updating profiles every time someone changes roles.
By automating these processes, you make sure that:
- New hires are invited to the network on their first day.
- Internal transfers automatically get access to their new location's, department's, and/or group's Feed, knowledge base, files, news, and more.
- Offboarded employees immediately lose access to the platform when they leave the company, keeping your network secure.
How it works
User Sync acts as a bridge between your HR system (the "source of truth") and Speakap. It periodically reviews your employee records and translates changes into actions in your network.
It relies on two core components:
- The employee record: a data export or API feed from your HR tool with all active employees and their organizational data (for example: store ID, department name, function).
- Mapping rules: logic that tells Speakap how to interpret your HR data. For example: "If an employee has Department ID '102' in the HR system, place them in the 'Supply Chain' department in Speakap."
For a full tour of the User Sync dashboard and its settings, see A walkthrough of User Sync and its options.
Key automated actions
Once configured, User Sync manages these lifecycle stages:
- Onboarding: it spots new records and sends out invitations via email or SMS (if configured), or creates credentials for printable invites.
- Mutations: if an employee's data changes (a name change, a new job title, a move to a different location), User Sync updates their Speakap profile and adjusts their group memberships.
- Offboarding: when an employee no longer appears in the active employee record, User Sync automatically deletes or anonymises their account based on your network's preferences. Note: the account is kept suspended for 30 days in case you need to recover it. Within that window, reactivation works both ways: in User Sync networks the account is anchored on the XID (with the "Allow XID change on reactivation" option if the identifier changed), and re-inviting the user with the same email address also restores the account. See What happens to an account when a user is deleted.
Implementation best practices
- Avoid manual changes. When User Sync is active and you manually add users to extra organizational units in Speakap, those extra memberships will not be overwritten during the next sync. For example, you can manually add a user to an additional Business Unit or Department if that matches their work reality; User Sync will not manage those manual additions. Good to know: you cannot manually remove memberships that are managed by User Sync. Only updates in your HR system change the primary Business Unit, Department, and Groups in Speakap.
- Keep data consistent. Make sure the organizational names or IDs in your HR system exactly match the mapping rules in the User Sync configuration. The cleaner your HR data, the better it lands in Speakap.
- Monitor the sync. Check your sync reports regularly to spot users who could not be processed because of missing data (like a missing email address, name, or an unrecognized department code).
Still stuck?
Email us at technicalimplementations@speakap.nl with your network name and your question about setting up or using User Sync, and we'll help you out.