Your job is in Mysolution, with a tidy publication underneath it. Then the retyping starts. The same text again on the careers site, again on the job boards, and as soon as someone applies you put the name, the CV and the motivation letter back into Mysolution by hand. Change something on the job and you get to do the whole round again.

With the Mysolution connection you do the work once. You create the publication in Mysolution and Booston picks it up, with the texts, the skills, the salary, the location and the recruiter attached to it. Applicants go back to Mysolution complete with CV, motivation letter and source, as an application on the right job. Update the status there and Booston follows. The end goal: Mysolution stays your only point of entry, and everything that happens outside it comes back together there.

After this article you know which data goes back and forth, how to set the connection up yourself with the setup wizard, how to configure your job texts and attributes, and where to look when something does not come in. You will find the screen at Menu → Settings → Connect → Ats.

Before you start

• The ATS connector module is switched on for your environment. If it is off, you will not see the Connect screen.
• You have the access details of your Mysolution environment: a Client id, a Client secret and the login url of your environment. You request them from Mysolution. See Step 1: arrange access in Mysolution.
• Your user role has access to Settings. Roles and rights are covered in Users: granting access, choosing roles and signing in through your ATS.
• There is at least one publication in Mysolution that hangs under a job and is set to show on the website. Booston only picks up publications, so without one there is nothing to check.
• You know which languages your environment uses. Mysolution gives every publication a language, and Booston only takes languages that are switched on in your environment.

What the connection gives you

The connection is not a one-off import. It is a continuous two-way exchange, and that gives you four things:

• One point of entry. You create the job and the publication in Mysolution and nowhere else. Change something and it changes everywhere.
• Online and in campaigns right away. A publication is on your website within a quarter of an hour, in your Job feed, and can join your campaigns on the Jobboard network and in Meta job ads.
• Applicants back in full. Name, contact details, CV, motivation letter and the applicant's source end up as an application in Mysolution, on the job they belong to.
• Statuses that follow along. When a recruiter moves the application to the next step in Mysolution, Booston sees it too. Your reports keep adding up.

On top of that the connection is multilingual: every publication in Mysolution has a language, and Booston puts it on your site in that language.

Which data goes back and forth

Below is exactly what travels the line, in which direction, and which setting switches it on. The names in the Setting column are the switches you will meet in Step 4: choose which data flows run.

From Mysolution to Booston

From Booston to Mysolution

How fast it is

• Publications are picked up every ten minutes. Mysolution does not send a notification when something changes, so count on at most a quarter of an hour between switching it on in Mysolution and seeing it on your site.
• Every night a full round runs. It fetches everything again, including what looked unchanged, so small differences never last longer than a day.
• Applicants go to Mysolution immediately on application. If that fails, Booston tries again every hour.
• Statuses come back once a night.

What does not travel

A few things deliberately stay behind with Mysolution. That way you know in advance what you arrange in Booston yourself:

• The rating of a candidate. Mysolution has a score per application, but Booston only takes over the status.
• Value lists for candidate attributes. With Mysolution the lists of possible values on your application form do not come from the ATS. You manage them in Booston, see Managing attributes for jobs and candidates.
• Open applications. An application without a job has nothing to attach to in Mysolution and therefore stays in Booston. You will find it under Menu → Recruitment → Candidates, see Creating and editing candidates.
• The job url back to Mysolution. The link to the job page is not written back.

Step 1: arrange access in Mysolution

Mysolution runs on Salesforce, and Booston signs in there as a connected application. You do not need a username and password for that. What you do need:

1. Ask your contact at Mysolution to switch on a connection for Booston in your environment. They create a connected app for it (in Salesforce that is called a Connected App) with an integration user that may read jobs, publications, skills and applications and may create applications.
2. Ask for the Client id and the Client secret of that app. In Salesforce they are also called consumer key and consumer secret.
3. Note down the login url of your Mysolution environment. It looks like https://yourcompany.my.salesforce.com. You will find it in the address bar once you are signed in to Mysolution.
4. Store the details safely. They give access to your jobs and your candidates.

Step 2: start the connection and pick Mysolution

1. In Booston go to Menu → Settings → Connect and click the Ats tab.
2. If it says Ats is not connected, click Connect. The setup wizard opens.
3. Under Select ATS pick Mysolution from the list. You will recognise it by the logo.
4. Click Next.

For Mysolution the wizard has four steps: Select ATS, Main settings, Functionality and Activation. You move back and forth between the steps with Previous and Next. Nothing is saved until you click Save in the last step.

Step 3: fill in the Main settings

The Main settings step holds the connection details. For Mysolution the wizard only shows the fields you need. You will not see a username, a password or a filter rule here.

Then click Next.

Step 4: choose which data flows run

On the Functionality step you switch on what may run between Mysolution and Booston. The options sit in two blocks.

Under Sync are the data flows themselves:

Under Real time connection settings are the settings for notifications from the ATS. Mysolution does not send such notifications, so these switches have no effect with Mysolution. Leave them off. The ten-minute round from How fast it is picks up your changes.

Click Next.

Step 5: activate the connection

The last step is called Activation. It carries a red warning, and rightly so: the switches on this step overwrite existing settings and work through your whole environment, including your website and your campaigns.

If you are setting up an environment for the first time, you usually want all four on. You then start with the default configuration for Mysolution and nothing from a previous situation lingers. If you are moving an existing environment from another ATS to Mysolution, leave them off and talk to the helpdesk first.

Click Save. You will see Synchronization in progress. Booston is fetching your publications at that moment, and that can take a few minutes. Once it is done, the You are connected screen appears.

Step 6: set up your job texts

The connection is in place, but you have not yet decided which texts you take over from Mysolution. You do that in the attributes. Start with the texts, because they determine what your job page looks like.

Go to Menu → Settings → Attributes → Job attributes. The screen is divided into sections: Title And Description, General, Salary, Location, Media and Other. The texts are under Title And Description.

Every text field in Booston is automatically linked to a text field in Mysolution: the title, the job description, the job requirements, the employment conditions, the application procedure and the company description. So you do not have to tie a field to a field yourself. You only decide which fields you take over.

Per attribute you arrange that with two switches:

• Status off means: the attribute is not active in Booston and the matching text is not fetched from Mysolution.
• Sync with ATS on means: Mysolution fills this text automatically. This is what you want in most cases.
• With Status on but Sync with ATS off, the field stays empty until you fill it in yourself on the job in Booston.

Click the pencil icon to configure an attribute further. The most important fields:

Step 7: set up the other job attributes

In the other sections, General, Salary, Location, Media and Other, you manage the attributes with fixed values: professional field, experience level, hours, salary, location, skills and so on. With Mysolution they come from the picklist fields on the publication and the job.

The two switches work the same as for the texts. Status decides whether the attribute exists in Booston, Sync with ATS whether Mysolution fills the value. If you switch Sync with ATS off while Status is on, you fill in the value yourself via Menu → Recruitment → Jobs → edit job.

In the edit screen of an attribute with values you have a few extra fields compared with the texts:

Next to the pencil icon is a list icon. It opens all values that came in through Mysolution, for example all professional fields or all education levels. When a publication comes in with a value Booston does not know yet, that value is added to the list automatically. You can adjust such a value afterwards, handy when you use an abbreviation in Mysolution but want the full word on your site, or when you need the value in a second language. More about this in Managing attributes for jobs and candidates.

Three attributes deserve a separate remark with Mysolution:

• Hours per week comes in from Mysolution as a number. Booston turns it into a choice: above 32 hours it becomes Full Time, below that Part Time.
• Skills sit on the job in Mysolution, per category. Booston puts every skill as a separate value on the matching attribute, so a candidate can filter on it on your site.
• Several values in one field, such as two languages or three workplaces, are split and each comes in as its own value.

Publishing jobs from Mysolution

The connection is in place. From now on publishing is something you do in Mysolution, and the concept that matters is the publication. Booston does not fetch jobs but publications: the job is the assignment, the publication is what you put out into the world. Every publication becomes its own job in Booston.

1. Create or open the job in Mysolution and fill in the texts, the skills and the picklist fields you switched on in Booston.
2. Create a publication under the job. Choose the language of the publication and fill in the fields that differ per publication, such as the publication period, the salary and the workplace.
3. Set the publication to show on the website.
4. Check the publication period. The start date must not be in the future if you want the publication picked up right away, and the end date must be in the future.

At the next round your publication is in Booston. Check it via Menu → Recruitment → Jobs. If you create two publications under one job, for example one in Dutch and one in English, you will see two rows in Booston. That is intended: the publication is the level at which language, period and salary differ.

If you take the publication off the website in Mysolution, or the end date passes, Booston takes it off your website. So there is nothing to clean up.

Receiving applications and sending them back

When someone applies to a publication that is online through Booston, on your website, through a job board or through an ad on social media, this happens:

1. Booston records the application with personal and contact details, CV and motivation letter.
2. Booston registers the application with Mysolution on the job the publication belongs to, with first name, middle name, last name, e-mail address, mobile number and the consent to the privacy statement.
3. The CV and the motivation letter go along as documents on the application.
4. The source goes along as UTM data, so you can see in Mysolution through which campaign and which channel the applicant came in.
5. Mysolution creates the application in the status Application and marks it as coming from outside Mysolution.

In Mysolution you will find the application on the job, not on the publication. That is how Mysolution processes an application from outside. In Booston the application simply stays on the publication that was applied to, so there you can still see which language version or which period someone responded to.

Because the UTM data goes along, you see in Mysolution not only that someone applied but also where from. What else you can do with that is in Analytics: seeing which channel brings you applicants.

If an export fails, for example because Mysolution is temporarily unreachable, the candidate stays in Booston and Booston tries again every hour, as long as Candidate export retry is on. So you do not lose an application.

Statuses back in Booston

When you move the application in Mysolution to a next status, Booston takes it over in the nightly round. Not every Mysolution status has a counterpart in Booston. By default these are translated:

If an application in Mysolution is in a status that is not in this table, Booston leaves the status as it was. If you use other statuses in your Mysolution environment, or want more steps to follow along, Booston configures that for you. See What you cannot arrange yourself.

Changing the connection later

Once the connection is in place, the wizard disappears. On Menu → Settings → Connect → Ats you then see You are connected with two collapsible blocks underneath: Main Settings and Ats Functions. They are the same fields as in the wizard.

1. Open the block you want to change.
2. Adjust the setting.
3. Click Save.

You will not meet the four switches from Step 5: activate the connection here again, so a normal change never throws away your jobs by accident.

If you want to stop the connection completely, click Disconnect. The exchange stops with that. Your jobs and candidates in Booston stay where they are.

What you cannot arrange yourself

• The translation of Mysolution statuses to Booston statuses. Which status from your Mysolution pipeline lands on which Booston status is configured for you by Booston. Mail support@booston.io with the status you use in Mysolution and the status you expect in Booston.
• Linking a Mysolution field to a Booston attribute. Which field of the publication or the job lands on which attribute is fixed per ATS. If you use your own fields in Mysolution that you want to show on your site, mail support@booston.io.
• Access on the Mysolution side. The connected app and the rights of the integration user are managed by Mysolution. If something changes there, you notice it in Booston because the import stops.
• The frequency of the synchronisation. It is fixed for your whole environment and cannot be set per client.

Troubleshooting

No publications come in at all

First check in Mysolution whether a publication really is set to show on the website, whether it hangs under a job and whether the publication period is right. If so, check in Booston whether Job, job attribute and recruiter import is on and whether the Url, the Client id and the Client secret are still correct. If it stays quiet, the integration user in Mysolution is usually missing the rights on jobs. That happens for instance after a change in the Mysolution configuration, and it gives no visible error message. Ask Mysolution to check the rights.

One publication is missing, the rest is there

Look at the publication period: a start date in the future or an end date in the past holds it back. Then look at the language of the publication. A language that is not switched on in Booston is skipped. Finally check whether the publication hangs under a job.

Publications come in, but fields stay empty

Then the attribute has Status on but Sync with ATS off. Switch it on in Menu → Settings → Attributes → Job attributes. At the next round the field is filled. If it stays empty, check whether the field is filled in Mysolution, on the publication or otherwise on the job behind it.

Applicants do not end up in Mysolution

Check whether Candidate export is on under Ats Functions. If it keeps failing, look at the job: an application can only be attached to a Mysolution job if that job really comes from Mysolution. An open application or a job you created by hand in Booston has no Mysolution job to attach to, and stays in Booston.

One applicant does not arrive, the rest does

Mysolution refuses a second application from the same person on the same job. If someone applies twice to the same publication, or to two publications of the same job, only the first arrives. The second stays in Booston with an exclamation mark. If you cannot work it out, mail support@booston.io with the name of the candidate and the job.

The status in Booston does not change along

The statuses come back once a night, so first wait until the next morning. If the status stays put, check whether the Mysolution status is in the table under Statuses back in Booston. A status that is not in it changes nothing in Booston.

Frequently asked questions

Can I create jobs in Booston instead of in Mysolution?

You can, but that is not what this connection is for. Everything set to Sync with ATS is overwritten at the next round by the value from Mysolution. If you want to manage a field in Booston, switch Sync with ATS off for that attribute.

Does the connection work with several languages?

Yes. Switch Multilingual on in the Main settings and create a publication per language in Mysolution. Every publication gets the language you give it in Mysolution. Attribute values that Mysolution does not translate, you translate in Booston under the attribute values.

Why do I see one job twice in Booston?

Because two publications hang under it in Mysolution. Booston works at the level of the publication, because that is where language, period and salary differ. If you want only one job on your site, take one of the two publications off the website in Mysolution.

What happens when I delete a publication in Mysolution or take it off the website?

At the next round that publication is no longer in the list Mysolution returns, and it disappears from Booston and from your website. Applications that already came in on it stay in Booston and in Mysolution.

Does the rating of a candidate come along from Mysolution?

No. Booston only takes over the status of an application. The score you give a candidate in Mysolution stays in Mysolution.

Can I work with several Mysolution environments on one Booston environment?

No. A connection works with one Client id and therefore with one Mysolution environment. Several Mysolution environments means several Booston environments.

Coming soon

• Seeing why an applicant did not arrive. When an export fails, the candidate in Booston will show exactly what Mysolution refused. Booston will also check an application before it goes out the door, so a phone number that is too long or a missing field does not only show up at Mysolution.
• Automatic retry after an outage. A round that fails because of a temporary outage, at Mysolution or on the way, will soon be retried by itself instead of waiting for the next round.
• The connection as a step in the guided setup. For new environments the ATS connection becomes a fixed step in the setup wizard, with the same four steps you met above. As soon as this is live, we will update this article.

Need help?

Stuck, or unsure which setting fits your situation? Mail 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 walk through the settings together? Book a free 30-minute online demo, and we will go through it with you. Job Done!