SFTP User Sync

SFTP User Sync connects your HR system or identity provider directly to Prodigy. Your HR system exports a CSV roster to a secure FTP endpoint on a schedule you control, and Prodigy takes it from there: new employees get accounts, existing records are updated, and terminated employees are deactivated, all without anyone touching the bulk uploader.

If your organization hires and offboards people regularly, this removes the manual roster maintenance entirely. Most HR platforms (UKG Pro, Workday, ADP, and similar) support scheduled SFTP file delivery out of the box.

How it works

1. Your HR system uploads a CSV file to Prodigy's secure FTP server over SFTP.
2. Prodigy automatically detects and processes new files, checking every 5 minutes.
3. Each row is matched to a user: new users are created, existing users are updated, and users marked terminated are deactivated.
4. The results of every sync are logged in a full sync history, and email alerts keep you informed of failures or items that need attention.

Before you start

You'll need:

• A Prodigy organization admin account, with SFTP User Sync activated for your organization
• An HR system (or any process) that can export a CSV and deliver it over SFTP on a schedule
• An SSH key pair for authentication. Your HR system or SFTP client generates this; you'll paste the public key into Prodigy during setup. Both ssh-rsa and ssh-ed25519 keys are supported, and no passwords are involved.

Step 1: Run the setup wizard

In your organization account, go to Settings → Integrations → FTP User Sync and the setup wizard opens.

Connection details

The first step shows the connection details your HR system will use:

Paste the SSH public key from your HR system or SFTP client into the key field. This key is how file uploads are authenticated, so there's no password to store or rotate. If you ever need to change it, the Update SSH Key action on the dashboard reruns this step.

For your IT team's security review: each organization gets its own SFTP login, and that login is scoped to your organization's own folder on the server. It can't see or touch any other customer's files.

Data format

The second step summarizes the CSV format (covered in detail below) and lets you Download Sample CSV to hand your HR team a template. You can also download the sample CSV template directly, no sign-in needed.

Click Complete Setup. Prodigy provisions your dedicated SFTP account and generates your username. If provisioning shows as Pending or Failed on the dashboard afterward, use Retry Provisioning; if it stays failed, contact support.

After setup, the Configuration card on the dashboard shows your full connection details, including the generated username, the upload path, and the file naming convention. Each value has a copy button so you can paste them straight into your HR system's file-delivery configuration.

Step 2: Set up department mappings

Department mappings link the department codes in your HR system's CSV to real departments in Prodigy. When a row is synced, its department value is looked up in your mappings to decide which Prodigy department the user belongs to.

From the dashboard, open Department Mappings and click Add Mapping for each department code your HR export uses:

• HR Department Code: the exact code your CSV will contain (for example DEPT-001). Each code must be unique.
• Department: the Prodigy department it maps to.
• Default Role: the role assigned to users synced through this mapping when their CSV row doesn't specify one.

Rows with a department code that has no mapping are rejected with an Unmapped department code error, so it's worth setting up all your mappings before the first file arrives. If a sync does encounter unmapped codes, they're listed on the Department Mappings page so you can add them with one click, and you can opt into an email alert for them too. Mapping changes take effect on the next sync.

Step 3: Configure email alerts

Open Email Alert Settings from the dashboard to choose who hears about sync activity and when. Alerts go to the recipient email address you set here.

Step 4: Upload your first file

Configure your HR system to deliver files with these rules, all shown on your Configuration card:

• Upload directory: your /inbox/ folder (shown as /your-username/inbox/ on the dashboard)
• File name: your-username_user_sync_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.csv, where the timestamp is the export time, for example acme-ems_user_sync_20260729_060000.csv. Files that don't match this naming convention are rejected.
• Format: a UTF-8 CSV with a header row, up to 50 MB (roughly 100,000 rows). If your roster is larger than that, split it into multiple files.

Files are picked up automatically, with Prodigy checking for new uploads every 5 minutes. There's nothing to trigger manually. Once your first file processes, it appears under Recent Activity on the dashboard and in the sync history.

The CSV file format

The SFTP sync uses the same unified format as the manual Upload Users CSV importer, so the same file works in both places.

Required columns

Optional columns

Values are case-insensitive and surrounding whitespace is ignored, so Active or Training Officer work fine. Files exported from Excel using CSV UTF-8 work as-is, and quoted fields (including commas or line breaks inside quotes) are handled correctly.

Certification columns

You can also include each provider's existing certifications, which is especially useful when onboarding a large roster, so everyone starts with the right training plan. Certifications are seeded onto brand-new accounts as they're created, and added for existing active members of your organization. Add up to five certification groups using numbered columns:

cert1_type, cert1_state, cert1_city, cert1_level, cert1_number, cert1_issued, cert1_expiration
cert2_type, cert2_state, cert2_city, ...

Fill in whichever fields apply to each certification (for example, a state EMS certification has a state and level, while a CPR card may only need issue and expiration dates) and leave the rest blank. Dates use YYYY-MM-DD.

Example

firstname,lastname,email,employee_id,department,status,role,hire_date
Avery,Johnson,avery.johnson@exampleems.com,EMP-001,DEPT-001,active,general user,2024-01-15
Harper,Williams,harper.williams@exampleems.org,EMP-002,DEPT-002,active,training officer,2023-06-01
Ethan,Miller,ethan.miller@exampleems.org,EMP-005,DEPT-001,terminated,,2022-03-10

For a complete template including the certification columns, download the sample CSV. The same file is available from the Download Sample CSV action on the dashboard.

What happens to each row

For every row in a file, the sync finds the right user and applies the change:

• Returning employee ID: if the employee_id has synced before, the row updates that user, refreshing their department assignment, role, status, and hire/termination dates.
• Existing Prodigy user in your organization: if the email matches an existing user in your organization, the row is linked to that account and the same updates apply. From then on they're tracked by employee ID.
• Existing Prodigy account outside your organization: the sync never silently absorbs an account your organization doesn't already manage. Instead, the person is sent an email invitation — they join your department (with any certification data from the row applied) when they accept. Rows Prodigy can't create an invitation for are flagged for manual review.
• New user: otherwise a new account is created in the mapped department. If the welcome email alert is enabled, they receive a login link automatically. A terminated row for someone with no Prodigy account is skipped, since there's nothing to deactivate.

A terminated status deactivates the user's department membership, removing their access, the same as toggling a user to Inactive on the Managing Users page. If they're rehired later, a subsequent active row for the same employee ID reactivates them with their training records intact.

Roles are capped

The role a sync can assign is capped by a per-organization limit, and the cap defaults to General User. Rows requesting a higher role are clamped down to the cap, so a mistake in an HR export can never silently mint admin accounts. If you want the sync to manage training officer or admin roles, ask your Prodigy representative to raise the cap for your organization.

Safety features

A few guardrails protect your roster from bad uploads:

• Row-count drop protection: if a file contains dramatically fewer rows than your previous completed sync (below roughly 80%), the sync aborts and sends a failure alert instead of processing it. This catches truncated exports, a network failure mid-export could otherwise look like a mass termination and deactivate large parts of your roster. Growing is always fine, so starting with a small pilot file and scaling up to the full roster won't trigger it, but going back down to a small test file after a full-roster sync will. If you have a legitimately large reduction coming (for example a divested division), contact support and we can adjust this behavior for your organization.
• File name validation: files that don't match the username_user_sync_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.csv convention are rejected before any processing.
• The Sync Active toggle: the dashboard has a Sync Active switch you can turn off any time, during an HR system migration, for example. While disabled, new files are not processed. Re-upload any files that arrived while sync was off after you re-enable it.
• Email conflict review: if a row's email matches an account the sync can't safely link on its own — a deleted or inactive account, or one belonging to someone outside your organization — that row is held for manual review rather than silently reactivating, duplicating, or absorbing the account. It's flagged in the sync detail (plus the email alert, if enabled).

Monitoring your syncs

The dashboard

The FTP User Sync dashboard shows sync health at a glance: an overall status (Healthy, Paused, Completed with Errors, or Error), totals for users synced, a sync activity chart, and the latest processed files under Recent Activity. The Configuration card below repeats your full connection details whenever you need them. Files are checked for automatically, so the dashboard is informational; there's nothing to run by hand.

Sync history

View Sync History opens the complete log of every processed file. You can filter by result (Success, With Errors, Failed), and search by file name or date.

Each sync shows one of these statuses:

Click Details on any sync to see the full picture: a processing summary (records found, successfully processed, created, updated, deactivated), the outcome of every row, and each error with its row number and reason. Rows rejected for an unmapped department code even link straight to the Department Mappings page so you can fix the mapping on the spot. You can download the original CSV or the annotated log from here for your records.

Troubleshooting

If a whole file fails rather than individual rows, the sync failure alert email and the sync detail page will both include the reason.

Need help?

If you're setting up an HR integration and want a hand, or something in a sync doesn't look right, reach out to support@prodigyems.com. We've helped connect a range of HR platforms and are happy to work with your HR vendor directly.