A job sits in your ATS — and then once more on your careers site. A candidate applies through the website and has to be retyped into your ATS by hand. Someone marks a candidate as rejected, but in Booston they are still marked as new. Every time you maintain something in two places, the two drift apart — and you lose time on work that produces nothing.

The ATS connector takes that away. Booston talks to your ATS through a connection we set up: jobs come in automatically, applicants go back automatically, and the status and rating your recruiters keep in the ATS simply show up in Booston. The end goal: your ATS stays the place where you work, and everything that happens there is in Booston too without any retyping — and the other way around.

After this article you will know exactly which data travels where, how fast that happens, what differs per ATS, how your attributes relate to the connection, and why a colleague coming in from the ATS sometimes is not let through yet. You will find the settings under Settings → Connect → ATS.

Before you start

• You need the Manager role to reach Settings → Connect. With the Recruiter role you do not see this screen.
• Your ATS has to be supported. Which ones are, is listed under Which ATS systems can be connected.
• You need credentials from your ATS vendor: usually an API user with a password, or a client id with a secret, plus the url of your ATS environment. You request those from your ATS vendor; expect it to take a few working days.
• Switching the connection on and setting it up is our job. You supply the details, we take it live and test along with you.

What a connection does: five flows of data

An ATS connection is not a one-to-one copy of your ATS. It is a set of agreed flows, each with its own direction. This is the base every connection supports.

Two things are worth knowing here:

• Your ATS owns jobs. What is there wins. Change a connected field in Booston and it will be overwritten with the value from your ATS at the next sync. Which fields those are is up to you — see Attributes: what the ATS fills and what you manage yourself.
• Booston owns applicants. An application starts in Booston and is then created in your ATS. Only the status and the review score come back afterwards.

Plug and play: how you connect

Connecting is deliberately a matter of switching on rather than building. There is no custom project, no developer on your side and no middle layer for you to maintain. Booston has already built the connection to your ATS; we fill in your details and switch it on.

Here is how that works in practice:

1. Let support@booston.io know which ATS you use and which environment it concerns.
2. Request the credentials from your ATS vendor. We will tell you exactly which details you need for your ATS.
3. We enter the details under Settings → Connect → ATS and switch the connection on.
4. Booston imports every job for the first time and lines up the attributes side by side.
5. Together we review that first import: are the jobs, the recruiters and the attribute values correct?
6. After that the connection is live and runs on its own.

What you see in the screen afterwards is the ATS card with the message You are connected and a Disconnect button, and below it the Settings card with three collapsible blocks:

• Main Settings — the connection itself: username, password or token, the url of your ATS and whether you work with more than one language.
• Ats Functions — which flows are switched on: job import, candidate export, status synchronisation and the publication url. If your ATS supports real-time updates, the Real time connection settings block appears here as well.
• Custom mappings — only for ATS systems where extra fields have to be mapped, for example where the video url or the resume file type lives in your ATS.

How fast it goes: periodic or real time

There are two ways Booston learns that something changed in your ATS. Which one applies to you depends on your ATS.

A few more things to know about the timing:

• Nothing happens unless something changed. Every run Booston compares what your ATS delivers with the previous delivery. If it is identical, nothing is updated. That spares both your systems and your ATS.
• A full synchronisation runs every night. It fetches everything again, including what looked unchanged. That way small differences never carry over for more than a day.
• An application goes to your ATS straight away, not at the next run. If that does not work immediately, Booston retries every hour, up to three times.
• Statuses and review scores come in overnight, unless your ATS passes them on in real time.

Which ATS systems can be connected

Booston connects with more than twenty ATS systems. The page ATS connection has the full overview; below you can see per system how fast it updates and what stands out about it.

Is your ATS not on the list? There are also connections without a page of their own, among them FullCircle, Jobforce, Recruiterflow and Poolmanager. Email support@booston.io with the name of your system and we will look at what is possible.

What differs per ATS

Every ATS vendor has its own API and its own data model. Booston translates that into one way of working, but not every system gives away the same amount. These are the differences you notice in practice.

Real-time updates

The ATS systems marked Real time in the table above can signal Booston themselves as soon as something changes on a job, and sometimes as soon as a candidate status or rating changes. If your ATS cannot do that, nothing is broken: the periodic run catches everything, just ten to twenty minutes later.

If your ATS supports webhooks, they can also be switched on or off per type. Jobs in real time and statuses overnight is a perfectly good combination.

Which fields travel

Not every ATS delivers the same fields. What one system holds as a separate field — the number of hours, the education level, the salary range — sits inside the job text in another. Booston connects what is there; whatever your ATS does not deliver, you fill in yourself in Booston.

Custom mappings

Carerix, OTYS, Bullhorn and SuccessFactors by SAP add one more layer: those systems work with their own numbers for things like the file type of a resume, the source of a candidate or the field holding the video url. We enter those numbers under Custom mappings, so the resume arrives in your ATS as a resume and not as a loose file.

Multiple languages

If you work with more than one language, your ATS decides whether that is possible. Some systems deliver several language versions per job; others deliver one language and you translate the rest in Booston. Under Settings → Connect → ATS in the Main Settings block you can see whether multilingual is switched on.

Status and review score

Whether the stage a candidate is in and the rating from your recruiter come back into Booston depends on whether your ATS exposes that data and on whether you want to see it in Booston. How that works is described under Status and review score back in Booston.

Jobs from your ATS into Booston

The job import is the flow you notice most. Every run Booston fetches the jobs your ATS delivers as publishable, and processes the difference with the previous run.

Per job this travels along:

• The job text and the title, per language if you work multilingual.
• The location. Booston looks up the coordinates itself, so the job appears on the map and shows up in a distance search.
• The publication dates: from when and until when the job may be live.
• Every attribute you have set up and switched to sync.
• The recruiter attached to the job, including profile details and photo.

What happens to jobs that disappear:

1. If your ATS stops delivering a job, Booston pauses it.
2. The job goes offline but stays in Booston — including every application, statistic and campaign record.
3. If the job returns from your ATS later, that same job becomes active again. So you never start over.

There is one more safeguard against outages: if your ATS unexpectedly returns zero jobs — an outage or maintenance on their side — Booston skips that run instead of taking all your jobs offline. After a few failed runs the alert does reach us.

Applicants from Booston into your ATS

Everything that comes in through Booston goes to your ATS: applications for a job, open applications and candidates you create yourself in the Candidates screen.

For an application, this travels to your ATS:

• The personal details of the candidate and the candidate attributes you have set up.
• The resume and the cover letter as a file, in the file type your ATS expects.
• The job applied for, linked to the right ATS record.
• The source, so you can see in your ATS that the candidate came in through Booston and through which channel.

How sending works:

1. The candidate completes the application form.
2. Booston creates the candidate in your ATS straight away and records the ATS number on the application.
3. If that fails — your ATS is briefly unreachable, or rejects a field — the application stays in Booston and Booston retries every hour.
4. After three failed attempts we get an alert and take a look.

Status and review score back in Booston

Your recruiters work in your ATS: they invite, reject, schedule interviews and give a rating. Booston pulls two of those things back, so your reporting is accurate and you can see in Booston what a campaign actually delivered.

These two flows can be switched separately, and the switch is not with the connection but with the attributes: if the candidate attribute for status or for review score is off, that flow is skipped. That way you decide yourself what comes back from your ATS.

Attributes: what the ATS fills and what you manage yourself

Attributes are the fields you use to describe jobs and candidates: job family, number of hours, education level, industry, driving licence, languages. With a connected ATS those fields are largely filled automatically — and that goes for job attributes as well as candidate attributes.

Per attribute you decide yourself whether it comes from your ATS or whether you manage it in Booston. You do that with the Sync with ATS switch in the overview:

Three more things that are specific to a connected environment:

• The Sync with ATS column only appears when there is a connection. Without an ATS the column is not there.
• The attribute values come from your ATS as well. The pick lists behind an attribute — every industry, every education level — are fetched overnight, so the list in Booston matches the one in your ATS. Add a value in your ATS and it will be in Booston the next day.
• The Ats identifier field is for advanced users. On a candidate attribute you can see which field in your ATS it is linked to. Do not change it yourself: the screen warns you for good reason that you can break your connection with it.

How to create, rename, group and display attributes on your job page is covered in the separate article on attribute management. That will appear on the helpdesk shortly; as soon as it is live, we will link to it here.

SSO: working in Booston from your ATS

A connected ATS often comes with something else: your colleagues do not have to sign in twice. With Carerix, Booston opens as a tab inside Carerix itself; with ForceFlow you click through from ForceFlow and you are signed in right away. That is called single sign-on, SSO for short.

What you need to know about it:

• When someone comes in through the ATS for the first time, Booston creates a user automatically.
• Whether that user can work straight away depends on one setting: Auto-activate iFrame / SSO users. Switched on, everyone allowed to work in your ATS also gets into Booston. Switched off, the colleague arrives as an inactive user and someone with the Manager role has to activate them first.
• We switch that setting on or off, but activating a user is something you do yourself.

If a colleague sees the message User has been paused. Please contact a Booston manager., nothing is broken: they are ready and only need to be set to active. How to do that is described in Users: granting access, choosing roles and signing in through your ATS.

The technical setup of SSO — what your ATS vendor has to configure and how the session works — is described in a separate article. That one follows shortly.

What you cannot arrange yourself

Part of the connection deliberately runs through us. Not to limit you, but because a wrong value here can take your entire job offering offline.

• Switching the connection on or off. The Disconnect button is in the screen, but do not use it without checking with us first: your jobs will stop being updated. Email support@booston.io.
• Changing credentials and urls. If something changes at your ATS vendor — a new password, a move to a different environment — let us know and we will adjust it.
• Switching real-time updates on or off. Webhooks have to be registered on both sides. Flipping the switch in Booston alone does not work.
• Filling in custom mappings. The numbers behind file types and sources come from your ATS. Request them there and forward them to us.
• Changing Auto-activate iFrame / SSO users. Email support@booston.io with the setting you want.
• Starting a manual, full synchronisation. Handy after a big clean-up in your ATS. Request it through support@booston.io.

Solving problems

A new job is not in Booston

Usually this is down to the job itself rather than the connection. Check in your ATS whether the job is on a published status and whether the publication period is correct: start date in the past, end date in the future. If that is right and the job is still not in Booston after twenty minutes, report it with the job number from your ATS.

A job is still live while it is gone from the ATS

The next synchronisation will pause it. Wait one run. If it stays live, your ATS is probably still delivering it — check whether the end date in your ATS has really passed.

A change to the job text does not come through

Two possibilities. Either the synchronisation still has to run: give it ten to twenty minutes. Or the field has Sync with ATS switched off, which means Booston leaves it alone. You can check that under Settings → Attributes → Job attributes.

A candidate is in Booston but not in my ATS

The export got stuck, for example because your ATS rejected a field. The candidate is not lost: they are complete in Booston. Report it with the name of the candidate and the job and we will push them through.

A field I change in Booston is back the next day

That attribute has Sync with ATS switched on, and your ATS wins. Change the value in your ATS, or switch the toggle off if you want to manage the field yourself from now on.

I see the same attribute value twice

Report this through support@booston.io with the name of the attribute and an example job. A full synchronisation clears the duplicates; we will start it for you.

Statuses or scores are not being updated

First check whether the candidate attribute for status or review score is switched on — if it is off, Booston deliberately skips that flow. If it is on and your ATS works periodically, the changes come in overnight and you will see them the next morning.

Frequently asked questions

Can I create a job in Booston while an ATS is connected?

Yes. Jobs you create in Booston yourself stay yours and are not overwritten. They are simply not written back to your ATS — that flow runs one way.

What happens to my jobs and candidates if the connection stops?

Everything stays in Booston. The jobs simply stop being updated, and new applications no longer go to your ATS automatically.

Can I connect two ATS systems at the same time?

No, one ATS connection is active per environment. If you work with several brands or labels on separate environments, each environment can have its own connection.

Does the connection put a load on my ATS?

Hardly. Booston requests the jobs and compares them with the previous run; if nothing changed, nothing else happens. If your ATS works with real-time updates, even less is requested.

Does Booston get to see my entire candidate database?

No. Booston only sees the candidates who came in through Booston, plus the status and rating of those candidates. Candidates who were already in your ATS stay there.

Do I have to set up my attributes again when I connect?

No. During connection we line up the attributes from your ATS next to those in Booston. What matches, we link; whatever your ATS does not deliver, you keep maintaining yourself.

Coming soon

• More ATS systems with real-time updates. We are expanding the number of connections that can receive a signal from the ATS instead of asking every ten minutes. As soon as this is live for your ATS, we will update this article.
• Multilingual jobs through Easyflex. If you work with Easyflex and with more than one language, the language versions will come straight from your ATS. As soon as this is live, we will update this article.
• More candidate attributes from Easyflex. Extra fields will be added that get filled automatically. As soon as this is live, we will update this article.
• A renewed Cockpit connection. The connection with Cockpit (RecruitNow) is moving to the latest version of their API. You will notice nothing in daily use, other than it becoming faster and more stable. As soon as this is live, we will update this article.
• SSO from OTYS. Clicking through from OTYS into Booston without signing in separately, the way it already works with Carerix and ForceFlow. As soon as this is live, we will update this article.
• A separate article on SSO and working in a tab inside your ATS. As soon as it is published, we will link to it here.
• A separate article on attribute management. It will cover how to create, order and display job and candidate attributes. As soon as it is published, we will link to it here.

Need help?

Are you stuck, or unsure whether something is down to your ATS or to the connection? Email support@booston.io or call 085 0044 215 and mention:

• the name of your environment;
• what you want to achieve;
• the message you see, if there is an error message.

Would you rather go through the settings together? Book a free 30-minute online demo — then we will go through it together. Job Done!