Announcing Connection Health Monitoring Improvements

We’re excited to announce several upgrades to Finch’s connection health monitoring tools. These improvements offer deeper insights into each employer’s connection status at a glance so you can ensure each integration is running smoothly.

What are connections?

Connections are a critical concept at Finch. Simply put, a connection is created when a single user (in this case, the employer) links their HRIS or payroll system through Finch Connect. The connection is 1:1:1, meaning a single employer and a single provider are linked through one authentication token. (Note: This concept becomes slightly more complicated if the employer has multiple Employer Identification Numbers (EINs), but this definition applies in most situations.)

Once a connection is established, data can flow between the employer’s system of record and your application through Finch’s API. 

Connection health monitoring: what’s new?

Keeping the connections between the employer’s HRIS/payroll system and your application healthy is essential to maintaining data flow between the platforms. That’s why Finch’s dashboard includes connection monitoring tools. 

The latest improvements to connection health monitoring include:

• A new, more detailed Connection Status field
• Granular filters to help you triage issues and identify stale connections
• A new way to monitor setup status for assisted integrations

Detailed Connection Status field

Previously, unhealthy connections were only identified in the dashboard as “Needs Attention.” Developers had to click into each individual connection’s page to see more detail. 

Now, the main dashboard page will display more granular detail about the status of each connection, making it easier to see, at a glance, what is impeding data flow. 

The new statuses are:

• Reauthentication needed: The employer needs to reauthenticate Finch as a user to enable data access.
• No account set up: The employer has not created an administrator account for Finch.
• Insufficient permissions: The employer has authenticated Finch as a user, but has not permissioned Finch to access the necessary data. 
• Multiple errors: This will appear if two or more of the above statuses apply. 

Filters for triaging issues and identifying stale connections

Two new filters have been applied to the main dashboard page, allowing you to filter connections by status and by last sync time.

With the new granularity of the connection status field, you can filter connections by the action item required—reauthentication, no account set up, insufficient permissions, or multiple errors. 

We’ve also added a new column to the dashboard called Last Synced; previously, this information was only available on the connection detail page. The addition of this column means you can now sort by this detail as well—set your timeframe (in hours, days, weeks, or months) and the filter will display all connections that last synced within or outside of that timeframe.

Assisted integration setup status

Finch supports both automated and assisted integrations. Assisted integrations are supported for our Scale plan customers through a feature called Finch Assist. These integrations require an employer to add Finch as a third-party administrator in their HRIS or payroll system.

Because the workflow for connecting employers to an assisted integration is slightly different than with automated connections, we’ve added a timeline on the connection detail page that allows you to see when each step of the process was completed and which are still pending. 

The milestones on the assisted setup timeline are:

• Token Created: The employer has completed the Finch Connect flow and a token has been sent to you, the application.
• Account Invitation Accepted: Finch has accepted an invitation from the employer to access the payroll system and has begun to set up the account.
• Permission Verified: Finch has verified that the employer has granted proper access to the system. At this point, the connection can now be configured.

This additional information makes it easier for developers, product managers, and operations teams to understand the status of assisted connections, and help walk through employers through any troubleshooting steps if needed.

Get started with Finch

Offer your customers integrations to hundreds of HRIS and payroll systems all through a single integration with Finch’s Unified Employment API. To learn more about the systems we support, visit our Integrations page or explore our developer docs.