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Data on HR import flag

Welcome to this forum!

Hi,

I'm facing a bit of an issue and it has to do with the integration of our Totara 2.9 and the HRIS software.

Namely, for legacy reasons, some of the users who have an ID number do not have HR import checkbox ticked on their account. This creates issues when we have rejoiners and their LMS accounts are not revived because they do not have this box ticked. The unfortunate thing is that no notification is sent to the administrator (me) when such events occur. In consequence, I can't guarantee that the state of records from HRIS is copied to LMS which is the bigger problem :)

What I wanted to do is get a list of accounts which:

1) Have an ID number

2) Do not have HR import checkbox ticked.

Is it possible to get this information somehow? I know that I can list those via the Browse list of users option, but I can't extract the list in csv. Nor can I use Bulk user actions as this only allows me to view users which are already active.

Any suggestions on how I can tick the HR import box on all users (irrespective of their status) if they have ab ID number? Or at least get a list of who these are?

Thanks in advance & happy holidays!

Best regards,
Vladimir

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Hi Vladimir,

Thanks for getting in touch and Happy New Year!

What I'd recommend in this scenario is to go to Users > Accounts > Bulk User Actions.

Here you can click "Show more" to reveal a list of filters. You should see one named "HR Import". Set it to "No" and click Add Filter.

You should now have a list of users and an option to "Add all". Once you've chosen the users select "With selected users..." choose Toggle HR Import.

After performing this action it should enable HR Import for all system users and avoid having to manually update this setting for users individually.

Do you think this would help in your scenario?

Cheers

Tom

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Hi Tom,

thank you very much for the reply.

Yes, this kind of crossed my mind, but unfortunately, in the column Available users I am only offered users that are already active. For those it is quite OK to do as you suggested.

Unfortunately, my concern is that some of the previously deleted colleagues who don't have HR import flag could be rejoiners in the future. In that case, they are not reactivated/revived via HR import & I have no way of knowing except for checking manually every import file & the state of LMS users after import.

Is there some other way that you think I can approach the issue?

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,

Vlad

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Hi Vlad

One of the filters under Bulk user actions is - is a member of an audience.

If you can make one of the audience rules to include 'User Is suspended' and 'ID number is empty' and include this in the bulk actions filter then this might work providing you haven't actually deleted the colleagues records.

Regards

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Hi Craig,

thank you for the answer.

Unfortunately, I (and a colleague before me) deleted quite a bit of colleagues who

1) Have an ID number

2) Do not have HR import flag

This happened because

1) Our LMS is older than our HRIS

2) Works on integration (for multiple reasons) lasted a long time

3) In that timeframe between assigning the accounts with ID (we did not use ID number field before integration arrived on the radar) and really using HR import flag, we deleted quite a bit of colleagues.

Therefore, is it possible

1) for LMS administrator to somehow turn on the HR import flag on deleted accounts in bulk? Even if there are more steps along the way, this would be my preferred option.

2) is this possible for our vendor to do? I would suppose that they have more access to databases than we do as administrators?

Thank you in advance!

Best regards,

Vlad

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Hi Vlad

Ok thanks for the information on deleting the user accounts - deleting an account does delete almost all user data and is not recoverable even at the database level.

There was an undelete button on earlier versions of Totara which allowed the reinstatement of the user with their ID and email but doesn't recover the user data.

Have you got any backups with the data on it?

regards

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Hi Craig,

sorry I got into a bit of a busy period and this wasn't on my radar.

I would now like to revisit this topic, however. Additionally I think I may have missed to pinpoint what is the real issue here for me as LMS admin. I will try to explain with a situation that happened today.

For example, I have a user account in LMS which is

1) Deleted

2) Has ID number

3) Does not have HR import flag

Today I got an HR import file which states that user with that ID number should be reactivated (column Deleted=0). LMS does not perform this action (reactivation) because there is no HR import flag. Also, I am not notified that this happened & this colleague does not go through mandatory training today. Luckily I got contacted separately via email that this user lacks access. Based on that info, I undeleted the account manually, checked the HR import flag and everything should work properly from now on.

If this user account for example lacked the ID number, LMS would try to make another account based on the that ID, but a rejection would occur because of duplicate username/email. A message would pop up in my inbox. In the real case, no rejection occurred, account was skipped for reactivation & nobody knew that this happened, which is the problem.
If this account had HR import flag checked (that info is not lost when account is deleted), it would simply be reactivated (which happens regularly).

In regards to your question, I am not sure why would I need backup of the user data? I can identify all users who are

1) Deleted

2) Have an ID number

What I don't know and I'm not sure what I would be required to do even if I did is which accounts have no HR Import flag. Even if I knew which account are a) deleted b) have ID number c) do not have HR flag, I wouldn't know how to bulk check the HR import flag for them.

I am aware that I can undelete such users manually (with the undelete button), but there are quite a lot of them in the database (couple of thousands) and this is not an option for me for this reason.

Hope this clarifes the challenge that I'm facing :) I've introduced a containment measure and HRIS is sending me a report on all rejoiners each month, which I use to cross-check if all of them have an active account. However, this helps me just to keep my head above the water & does not permanently solve this issue. What would solve it is if I somehow could insert HR flag into all deleted accounts via bulk :)

Thankful for any info that could be used to crack this :)

Best regards,

Vlad

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Hi Vlad

Thanks for explaining - if you don't need the deleted users information then you don't need a backup to restore this.

It doesn't look as though you can undelete a user with HR Import but it looks like this can be done with the Upload users

The deleted users can be viewed under Site Administration > User data management > Deleted users
The users can then be exported to get the user details
Prepare a file for upload user that contains the deleted column and the data from previous step with value of 0 to undelete the use
There is a bulk user action that has a filter for HR Import value. Once the deleted user has been restored then you should be able to see the users that don't have the HR Import flag

Let us know if there are any problems with this.

Regards

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