Tracking and Automating Business Processes Posted To Matt Blogs IT
New Post has been published on http://mattblogsit.com/microsoft/windows/powershell/tracking-and-automating-business-processes
Tracking and Automating Business Processes
As businesses grow it can become difficult to keep up with business processes. To keep up with a constant flow of tasks associated with these processes you need to track them; especially when multiple people are involved with the process. These processes become even more difficult when you are having to enter data into multiple systems; this even increases the risk of human error every time data needs to be entered.
In recent months I’ve been tasked with helping different business units improve and track their processes. Specifically I started with our on boarding experience. It is geographically disperse and sometimes the people involved with the on boarding only do a few a month and there is a lot that needs to go into it. You have to factor in things such as IT, Payroll, Equipment, Licensing, Training which makes it keeping everyone in the loop difficult.
To combat these difficulties we settled on a product called TallyFy. TallyFy gives us a dashboard that will show us how our processes are progressing. It helps keep everyone on the same page and helps communicate issues in a more rapid manor.
Our hurdle with TallyFy was that it was tacking yet another system into our on boarding experience. We already had three different systems involved with someone applying > receiving their first pay check. This caused data re-entry which is prone to typos. To combat the data re-entry we needed to integrate our different systems. As previously blogged about I wrote a PowerShell Module to interact with the BirdDog HR system; we use this to send our new hires their employee packet to fill out before day one. With this PowerShell Module I was able to query new in-coming employees – my next task was to integrate it with TallyFy so that would could track the progress of the on boarding.
I was lucky enough that TallyFy has done a fantastic job writing an API that their own web interface runs on and I have the ability to do everything they can do. One of the challenges with this is that their API is very complex. I’ve been lucky enough to work close with their team to build out this PowerShell Module that only touches on a small fraction of what is exposed via their API.
Consider this a part 1 of many on how to use this PowerShell Module and interact with their API.
PowerShell Module Git Repository:
I am storing this Module on my personal Git Repository; as it is built out more I might publish into the PowerShell Gallery. You can find the Module at TallyFy API PowerShell Module.
Store the psd1 and psm1 files in Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\TallyFy.
Connecting to TallyFy API
Login to https://go.tallyfy.com
Click on your name in the Top Right corner of site
Click Settings
Click Integrations
Note your Client ID and Client Secret
Open PowerShell and run the below command
Connect-TallyFyAPI -ClientID 'Your client ID' -ClientSecret 'Your Client Secret' -Credential (Get-Credential)
Use your TallyFy Username and Password when prompted
Feel free to explore the other commands by running
Get-Help -Module TallyFy
In future blog posts we will cover specific use cases on how to use the module!
