Connect BCS HR to Active Directory (on-premise)

How does Joinly sync BCS HR to Active Directory?

Joinly reads each HR change in BCS HR in the cloud through the RESTful Services API, then hands the action to the Joinly AD Agent inside your network, which makes the change in Active Directory. BCS holds the authoritative medewerker and dienstverband record; the agent is the only component that touches your domain.

1. Joiner. HR completes the hire in BCS HR. Joinly reads the new medewerker and dienstverband, determines the role from afdeling, functie and kostenplaats, and instructs the AD Agent to create the user in the correct OU, build the sAMAccountName and UPN from your rules, and add the right security groups — timed to the contract start date.

2. Mover. When someone changes functie, afdeling or organisatie-eenheid, Joinly tells the agent to move the user to the matching OU, swap security-group membership and update attributes. Access that no longer fits the new role is removed, so permissions stay aligned with the actual job.

3. Leaver. On the contract end date, Joinly instructs the agent to disable the AD account and optionally move it to a disabled-users OU. Multiple dienstverbanden are taken into account, so an account is only disabled when the last active contract ends.

Example: A transport and logistics company runs BCS HR and an on-premise AD across three depots. It hires a warehouse worker with a start date next Monday. Joinly reads the dienstverband, and on Monday morning the AD Agent creates the user in the Depot-A > Warehouse OU, sets the sAMAccountName to a unique pattern, and adds the Warehouse-Operations group. When the worker later moves to the dispatch team, the agent moves the object to the new OU and swaps the groups the same day.

What manual AD account management costs

Without automation, every account starts as a BCS ticket that an admin works through in Active Directory Users and Computers by hand — creating the object, choosing the OU, building the sAMAccountName, adding groups. You can script something against a BCS webservice export, but it offers no role-to-group logic and no awareness of contract dates or multiple dienstverbanden, so the decisions still fall to people.

• Onboarding delays. New joiners wait for an AD account and group access while a ticket sits in a queue, losing productive days in their first week — costly when a flex worker is only on site briefly.

• Permissions that don’t keep up (privilege creep). When movers change functie or afdeling, old security-group membership often stays attached, so people accumulate rights they no longer need.

• Forgotten offboarding. Accounts that aren’t disabled on time are a security and audit risk — and with multiple dienstverbanden it is easy to disable an account while another contract is still active.

Joinly vs. the Entra provisioning agent for AD

BCS has no native path to on-premise AD, so the alternative is Microsoft’s Entra provisioning agent fed from a generic source, or a home-grown script on a BCS export. Both can write attributes but stop short of the part that actually decides access. Here’s how they compare for a BCS-driven AD setup.

Watch-outs when connecting BCS HR to Active Directory

A few details decide whether this connection stays reliable at scale, especially in high-churn staffing environments.

• sAMAccountName uniqueness and length. AD limits the sAMAccountName to 20 characters and it must be unique across the domain. Joinly builds it from your rules with a fallback pattern, so duplicate names never produce a collision or a truncated, unreadable login.

• OU placement from BCS structures. Afdeling, kostenplaats and organisatie-eenheid don’t map one-to-one to your OU structure. Joinly builds explicit rules that place each user — and move them on a transfer — into the correct OU.

• Contract dates and high churn. BCS stores each dienstverband with a start and end date, and in flex/uitzend those come and go constantly. Joinly reads the dates and has the agent create the account on the right day and disable it when the contract ends, not before.

• Multiple dienstverbanden and rehires. An employee can hold more than one active contract, and rehires are routine. Joinly applies rules to keep a single, stable AD object driven by the leading contract, so a second placement adds groups and a rehire re-activates the existing object rather than creating a duplicate.

• Service-account permissions. The agent acts under a service account with delegated rights. Joinly works with least-privilege delegation scoped to the target OUs, so the agent can create, move and disable users without domain-admin rights.

Joinly handles each of these by default with custom mapping and transformation.

Always audit-ready

Every account action the Joinly AD Agent performs is logged in the Joinly cloud: who was affected, when it happened, which OU and groups changed and which BCS HR change triggered it. For NIS2 that matters directly: access can be traced back to an authorised HR source rather than an ad-hoc request. Joinly is ISO 27001 certified, runs in an EU data centre in Amsterdam, applies least-privilege by default, and is built to meet NIS2 and ISO 27001.

Example case

Take a transport and logistics SMB with around 700 employees across three depots, running BCS HR but still living in an on-premise Active Directory for its warehouse and planning systems. Every new driver, warehouse worker or planner starts as a BCS record that IT processes by hand in AD — creating the object, choosing the depot OU, building the login, adding groups. With seasonal peaks, agency workers and frequent internal moves the queue never empties, and new joiners wait until day two or three for their account.

Connect BCS HR to Active Directory with Joinly and that work disappears. The Joinly AD Agent creates each user in the right depot OU on the contract start date, builds a unique sAMAccountName, adds the correct security groups, moves people on a transfer and disables accounts on the contract end date with a 30-day grace window — all driven by the HR change in BCS HR.

“An account is simply ready in the right depot OU when the driver starts, transfers move themselves, and we can show the auditor exactly which BCS change created every bit of access.” — Head of IT, transport and logistics company

The outcome this setup is designed for: onboarding drops from days to zero touch, privilege creep from old roles is eliminated, and the team can walk into its next NIS2 assessment with a complete, source-backed audit trail.