🔓 Access level in Planday: Administrator or HR Manager with access to all departments in Planday.

⏱️ Set up time: 10 min.

⏱️Reading time: 5 min.

Overview of the HiBob integration

The HiBob integration syncs your employee data from HiBob to Planday. Data flows one way only — from HiBob to Planday and HiBob is the single source of truth. Changes made directly in Planday to synced fields will be overwritten on the next sync. Planday checks for changes in HiBob automatically every 3 hours.

Key functionalities of the HiBob integration:

Syncs new employees
Updates employee profiles
Creates or maps employee groups
Creates or maps departments
Deactivates terminated employees
Imports approved leave

Step 1: Setting up the integration in HiBob

The HiBob integration uses a service user — a dedicated integration account in HiBob — rather than a personal login. You must create this service user and configure its permissions in HiBob before connecting in Planday.

Create a service user in HiBob

Log into HiBob and click the products icon in the top-left corner.
Go to System Settings > Integration Tools > Service users.
Click Create Service User.
Enter a display name — for example, "Planday Integration Service User" — and click Create.
Copy the Service User ID and token that appear. You will need these when connecting in Planday.

Create a permission group and assign the service user

From the same dialog, click Go to permissions group (or navigate directly to permission settings in HiBob).
Click Create permission group, then select Service user.
Enter a group name — for example, "Planday integration".
In the Select service users section, search for and select the service user you created above.
Click Create, then Confirm.

Configure permissions for the service user

The specific permissions will depend on the scopes selected in step 1 below. Follow the instructions in the integration set-up modal.

A detailed guide on the set-up in HiBob can be found here: Integration between Planday and HiBob

Step 2: Complete the setup in Planday

You can connect an HR integration from any of these pages in Planday:

Planday Web > Settings > Integrations > Overview > HiBob > Set up
Planday Web > People > Employees > Create employees > Connect with HR system

Set scopes: Choose whether you want to disable any optional scopes (such as pay rates if you don't want to transfer salaries)
Authenticate: Enter the Service User ID and token you generated in HiBob.
Configure Filter: Select any filters to apply to manage which employees are imported from HiBob to Planday.
Review and confirm: Review the data to be synced and confirm.

Once confirmed, Planday will run an initial sync. Depending on the size of your employee directory, this may take a few minutes.

Note: Teams are a custom field in HiBob. If you need to filter based on teams in HiBob please contact Planday customer support.

Note: If you want employees to be imported into Planday who has a start date in the future (eg. to schedule them before they start). When configuring the filter during setup (or reconfiguring it), make sure to include the employment status "Pending." This ensures employees who haven't started yet are still imported ahead of their start date. Remember that Planday charges pr. employee so this might affect your billing.

Step 3: Onboarding wizard: flexible entity mapping

After connecting and filtering, a guided wizard walks you through how your HiBob data maps into Planday. This gives you direct control over your data structure rather than relying on automatic-only mapping.

Wizard step 1 — Configure entity mapping

Choose how each HiBob entity type maps to Planday:

HiBob entity	Can map to
Departments	Planday Departments, Planday Employee Groups, or skip
Teams (Teams in HiBob are stored as a custom field and cannot be mapped automatically. Contact Planday Support to configure team mapping for your account)	Planday Departments, Planday Employee Groups, or skip
Work locations / Sites	Planday Departments, or skip
Positions / Job titles	Planday Employee Groups, or skip

Note: If all entity mappings are skipped, the integration will create one default department and one default employee group automatically.

Note: Planday departments and employee groups are only created for groups that contain employees currently being imported.

Wizard step 2 — Map departments

Review which HiBob entities will create or update departments in Planday. Confirm or adjust the assignments before continuing.

Wizard step 3 — Map employee groups

Review which HiBob entities will be used to assign employees to groups in Planday. Confirm or adjust the assignments.

Wizard step 4 — Configure absence and employee settings

Choose whether to sync absence to Planday and from when.
Choose whether to create open shifts if an absence is synced on a day where an employee has a shift.

Wizard step 5 — Review and confirm

Review all your configuration choices. Once you confirm, the integration status moves to pending and the first full sync begins. The integration is marked as complete once the initial sync finishes.
Choose whether new employees added through the integration should automatically receive an invite email to Planday. This setting can be adjusted later.

Data mapping between HiBob and Planday

Standard fields are mapped automatically. The table below shows the default field-to-field mapping.

HiBob fields that Planday map

The following employee data syncs from HiBob to Planday:

First name and last name
Email address
Mobile phone number
Date of birth
Start date
Termination date
Home address (street, city, postcode)
National ID / SSN
Profile picture

Salary
Pay rate and pay period sync from HiBob to Planday (unless disabled in scopes). Salary data is drawn from employment records in HiBob. For salary to sync, the currency in HiBob must exactly match the currency in your Planday portal. The integration does not convert between currencies.

Absences
Absence types and absence records sync from HiBob to Planday. Absences that started in a previous calendar year cannot be synced retroactively. These must be created manually in Planday from the start of the current year.

How mapping works

Departments are additive only. When an employee's department changes in HiBob, the integration adds them to the new department in Planday but does not remove them from existing departments. This includes departments added manually in Planday — the integration will never remove a manual assignment. Employees can belong to multiple departments in Planday, and any manual additions are preserved across every subsequent sync. To remove an employee from a department, a manager must do this manually.

Employee groups are additive only. When a position changes in HiBob, the integration adds the employee to the new employee group in Planday but does not remove them from any existing groups. This applies equally to groups added manually in Planday — the integration will never remove a manual assignment. All group removals must be done manually in Planday.

Empty departments are not synced. A department is only created in Planday if at least one synced employee belongs to it.

Important notes and limitations

HiBob is the single source of truth

Changes to synced employee fields made directly in Planday will be overwritten on the next full sync. Make all data changes in HiBob.
Email address is an exception. The email in Planday functions as the employee's login username. Changing it in HiBob will not update it in Planday, to prevent employees from being locked out. Email changes must be made directly in Planday.

Teams require CX support

Teams in HiBob are a custom field and cannot be mapped automatically. Contact Planday Support to configure team mapping for your account.

Updating filters

Filters are set at connection. To change which employees are included in the sync, you must disconnect and reconnect the integration.
Reconnecting removes links after one month. If the integration is disconnected for more than one month, all links between HiBob and Planday profiles are permanently removed. Reconnecting within one month preserves existing links.

Reconnecting the Integration after a longer period has passed (Data Link Loss)

When the integration is deactivated, existing links are preserved for up to 1 month before being permanently removed. Reconnecting within this window reduces the risk of data loss as the unique IDs will be kept. After the 1-month period, all prior links are permanently deleted.

Why might this cause duplicates?

This loss of links becomes critical when the primary identifier (e.g. Email/Username) has been changed in HiBob but has not yet been updated in Planday.

Since the Email in Planday is an exception to the One-Way Data Sync rule, the email change in HiBob will not automatically update the corresponding Planday profile. If the integration is deactivated and reactivated in this state, the system will not recognize the profiles as the same user and will re-create the user as a duplicate in Planday.

Manual deactivations in Planday are not auto-reversed

If you manually deactivate an employee in Planday who is still active in HiBob, the sync will not reactivate them. Reactivate them manually in Planday, or deactivate and reactivate in HiBob to trigger the change.

Deactivated employee shifts are not deleted

When a termination date is reached in HiBob, the employee's Planday profile is deactivated but their assigned shifts remain. Managers must reassign or delete those shifts.

Required Planday fields can block sync

If your Planday workspace has custom required fields not covered by the integration mapping, the sync for affected employees may fail until those fields are set to not required again.

Prevents Data Duplication

The integration uses persistent external IDs to link profiles between HiBob and Planday, which prevents the creation of duplicate employees if data is changed in Planday — but not in HiBob. An employee is matched on email when the sync first runs, but even if the email changes afterwards, the persistent ID is retained.

Sync Frequency

The integration automatically syncs data every three hours. A manual "Sync now" button is also available in the integration settings.

Note: The automatic sync is a partial sync (only syncs changes), whereas the “sync now” option is a full sync. If data is not transferred try to complete a manual sync before reaching out to support.

How to import leave data from HiBob to Planday

When Absence Sync is enabled for your HiBob integration, approved leave recorded in HiBob is automatically imported into Planday. HiBob remains the single source of truth for all absence data; Planday simply reflects what has been approved in HiBob.

How leave is displayed in the schedule

Visual leave indicators: Approved absences from HiBob are shown on the schedule as a leave bar (green bar) so managers can quickly see when an employee is unavailable.
Existing shifts are left as is: If an employee already has a shift in Planday on a day where HiBob reports approved leave, that shift is either not automatically converted to an Open Shift or left as is, depending on the integration setting. The setting can be updated by going to Planday Web > Settings > Overview > HiBob > Set up.
Approved leave only: Only approved absences from HiBob are synced into Planday; pending absences are ignored.

Handling of partial leave days

A note will be added to the leave in Planday clarifying that the employee is off for only part of the day.

HiBob leave configuration

Direction of sync: Leave sync is one-way (HiBob to Planday). All accruals, approvals and policy checks happen in HiBob.
Enable/disable: Leave Sync is controlled via a toggle in the integration settings, and each imported absence event is logged in the Integration Sync Log for traceability. Leave sync is on by default.

Why are some HiBob absence policies not synced even though the policy has units in HiBoB?

This is usually caused by a permissions gap on the HiBob service user. HiBob masks policies with custom names unless the permission group explicitly allows them to be visible.
To resolve this:
1. Log into HiBob and navigate to the permission group assigned to the integration service user.
2. Click the People's data tab.
3. Under Time off, locate See who's out today.
4. Enable "See who's out because of a private policy or policies with a custom name".
5. Click Save, then trigger a re-sync from the Planday integrations page.
Once this permission is enabled, HiBob will expose the policy unit (Days or Hours) and the integration will create the absence policy in Planday.

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HiBob integration - Setup guide with Planday