Integrating Kuali with Local Systems

• Integrations at Your Fingertips
• System Integration Example with Rest APIs (Banner)
• System Integration Example using Middleware (PeopleSoft)

Integrations at Your Fingertips 

Kuali has a rest API (Application Programming Interface) configuration tool that allows you to easily  connect Kuali to your local systems (i.e. HR, Financials, Student, etc.).  This means you can build out integrations to pull external information into Kuali or post information from Kuali to other systems at your institution. Whether that's pulling employee information from your HR system, course info from your Student system, or room/building information from your resource management system - the possibilities are endless!  As long as your local system offers rest APIs, then Kuali can connect.

You can do that by creating an integration with your local system and then adding that integration to your form - more information on that can be found in the API Integrations for Advanced Gadgets article. Also, to get you started on your API journey with Kuali, you can see the Kuali API Documentation. Additional resources can also be found in the API Integrations section of the Knowledge Base.  Below we go over some examples of connecting local systems to Kuali.

Note: Please always refer to the local system API documentation when setting these integrations up in Kuali.  Be aware that below links and examples may be outdated if anything has changed on the third party side. 

System Integration Example with Rest APIs (Banner)

Banner's student system offers rest APIs that can be used to create an integration in Kuali.  Banner's API documentation can be requested from Ellucian directly, and if you're a customer you should have access to their documentation guides (they're not publicly published). Using these resources you can find the applicable endpoints and data references when creating an integration in Kuali.

For example, the Kuali integration below was set up to pull a student's major from Banner. The integration is a GET pointed to Ellucian's endpoint for the user profile, with associated auth to access Ellucian, and the appropriate identifiers needed in the Path to Results and ID/Label Key. In this example they were referencing the SORLFOS (Curriculum Field of Study Table) and majrDesc. And in the rest of the configuration it specifies what information is required for input to run the integration (rnumber), header, and outputs of data that will be returned when the integration runs.

   

Once this integration is complete, you can add it to your form using either the Data Lookup (Single Item), Data Lookup (List), or Data Lookup (Multiselect) gadgets and select the newly created integration as the Data Source.  So when a user is selected in the form, you could then pull this associated data for display automatically via the integration - you would just need that rnumber somewhere in the form to populate as the input for the integration.  More information can also be found in 'Add to Your Form' section of the API Integrations for Advanced Gadgets article.

System Integration Example using Middleware (PeopleSoft)

Often local systems (i.e. PeopleSoft and others) may not have APIs and would only be accessible via middleware to retrieve and send data.  So rather than pointing directly to the system in the Kuali integration, you would point to the middleware endpoint used to create the job/stored procedure to access that local system.  Some common middleware products that can be used for this purpose are Constituo, Boomi, and MuleSoft.

In the below example the customer is using Constituo middleware endpoints to run the stored procedure to pull the Supervisor of a given user (based on rnumber). 

Once this integration is complete, you can add it to your form using either the Data Lookup (Single Item), Data Lookup (List), or Data Lookup (Multiselect) gadgets and select the newly created integration as the Data Source. So when a user is selected in the form, you could then pull this associated data for display automatically via the integration - you would just need that rnumber somewhere in the form to populate as the input for the integration.  More information can also be found in 'Add to Your Form' section of the API Integrations for Advanced Gadgets article.