Install and Run Oracle Integration Recipe - Extract New Hire Info from HCM Cloud

Background

Accelerators and recipes are a great way to kick-start on building your integrations. Accelerators are run-ready business integrations or technical patterns you can configure and activate. Recipes are starter templates that give you a head start. Some of the recipes exist today as separate downloads via Oracle Marketplace and other repositories. Oracle-built recipes are harvested and they are made available as part of Oracle Integration instances. OIC new Home Page brings these right to your doorstep!

For instance if we need to automate HCM Cloud extract and push it to an SFTP server there is a Recipe for that. As part of this blog series we will see how to customize the OOTB Recipe and modify the Integration Flow

Here is the list of OIC Recipes integrating with HCM Cloud 

Recipe Usecase

There are many usecases where automation of HCM Cloud extracts plays a crucial role. Here are some examples from our Customer Scenarios in their Enterprise Integration world.

• HR & Payroll or Benefits data to 3rd Party Service Providers
• HR & Paryroll data sent to another application in an co-existent scenario
• Data Archiving

Pre-requisites to Run the Recipe

Oracle HCM Cloud Extract

• Configure HCM Cloud Extract Definition Navigating to Data Exchange
• Add Delivery Option as WebCenter Content and provide an Integration Name
• Submit extract

          

• Verify the Extract Status is Completed

           

• Navigate to UCM and verify the extract is available

           

Install and Configure the Recipe

Navigate to OIC Home page

Search for Export New Hire Info

Select Install and you should now see the Recipe status as Installed. Click on Configure if you wish to configure the connection or replace with existing Connections

Configuration Editor is a great way to manage your Integration resources. Shows all the applicable connections to replace with a given Connection (Connections of same Type and Role)

We see the Recipe is installed.

Edit the Integration and Customize the Integration flow as appropriate.

The OOTB Recipe (i) Fetches the New Hire Export from UCM and (ii) Writes the extract file to SFTP Server

Let's Configure/Review a few things before we Activate and Run the Integration

• Scheduled Parameter is defined on Schedule Activity to persist the lastProcessedDocumentId value

          

• getExtractFile - Provide the Integration Name as per the Web Center Content Delivery option configured (Refer: Pre-Requisities section above)

Observe the Option to "Receive Files from HCM Cloud" greatly simplifies to fetch files from UCM as big as 1 GB in the form of Attachments.

• writeFile2SFTP - Configure the SFTP directory as appropriate
• assignDocId - Document Id from getExtractFile response is assigned to Schedule parameter which needs to be persisted across successive integration run

Activate and Run the Integration

Before Running the Integration make sure the New Hire Extract is Submitted and Completed as indicated in the Pre- Requisite section

Use Submit Now to submit the Integration on demand

The default Value is presented in the Scheduled Parameter UI which is "0". Once the Extract is successfully fetched the document Id is assigned to the Scheduled parameter and an xml file is written to SFTP server configured.

The output of the New Hire Extract

In the Second Run of Integration you will notice the DocumentId which is captured from the previous run of the Integration

In certain usecases, it might be required to share schedule parameter values between a scheduled Run and a Submit Now Run. To enable sharing, Run as part of schedule checkbox needs to be enabled when doing a Submit Now operation.

Conclusion

OIC Recipes provide a very easy way to get started with the given Usecase and gives complete flexibility to customize the Integration Flwow and Connection resources as required leveraging the Configuration Editor. The OOTB recipe expects an Extract to be Scheduled/Completed in HCM cloud. However, many customers wanted to automate this further to manage/monitor the Extract Schedule and Run the Job from the OIC instead of Scheduling it from HCM Cloud. Will be extending this Usecase further in the next blog.