Trigger Employee Onboarding from External Systems

Use Easy Template Automation and the REST API to create standardized employee onboarding work in Jira when a new hire is created or reaches a defined onboarding status in an external business system.

Use case

When a new employee is marked as Hired, Ready for onboarding, or equivalent, the external system sends a POST request to Easy Templates. The configured template then creates the required Jira issues for HR, IT, Security, Facilities, and the employee’s manager.

Typical onboarding activities include account provisioning, equipment preparation, access requests, contract administration, workspace setup, and first-day coordination.

1. Prepare the template in Easy Issue Templates

1. Navigate to Manage Templates and select the Employee Onboarding template.

2. Open the Automation settings.

3. Enable automation and generate a new web request URL.

4. In the payload builder, select the required operation, such as Create Issues or Apply Template.

5. Select the target Jira project, or configure the request to provide the target projectId.

6. Define the variables used by the template, such as employee_name, job_title, department, manager_name, start_date, and work_location.

7. Copy the generated web request URL and payload for use in the external system.

2. Configure the external system

1. Configure a workflow, automation rule, or integration action in the external system.

2. Set the trigger to a new employee record or a status change such as Hired or Ready for onboarding.

3. Configure an HTTP request with method POST.

4. Use the web request URL generated by Easy Templates.

5. Add the header Content-Type: application/json.

6. Map employee fields to the variables expected by the template.

{
  "operation": "create-issues",
  "projectId": "10025",
  "variableValues": {
    "employee_name": "{{employee.full_name}}",
    "job_title": "{{employee.job_title}}",
    "department": "{{employee.department}}",
    "manager_name": "{{employee.manager_name}}",
    "start_date": "{{employee.start_date}}",
    "work_location": "{{employee.location}}"
  }
}

3. Optional Jira Automation routing

If the external system cannot call Easy Templates directly, route the event through a Jira Automation rule:

1. Create a Jira Automation rule with an Incoming Webhook trigger.

2. Configure the external system to send its event to the Jira webhook URL.

3. Add a Send web request action.

4. Set the destination to the Easy Templates web request URL.

5. Use POST, set the body type to Custom data, and map values from the incoming webhook.

{
  "operation": "create-issues",
  "projectId": "10025",
  "variableValues": {
    "employee_name": "{{webhookData.employee.name}}",
    "job_title": "{{webhookData.employee.title}}",
    "department": "{{webhookData.employee.department}}",
    "manager_name": "{{webhookData.employee.manager}}",
    "start_date": "{{webhookData.employee.start_date}}",
    "work_location": "{{webhookData.employee.location}}"
  }
}

4. Validate the integration

1. Use a test employee record or test event in the external system.

2. Confirm that the HTTP request is accepted successfully.

3. Verify that the onboarding epic, tasks, or subtasks are created in the target Jira project.

4. Confirm that employee-specific variables are populated correctly.

5. Check assignments, due dates, dependencies, and notifications generated by the template.

Recommended template variables

Expected outcome