BambooHR Production Checklist

Overview

Complete pre-launch checklist for deploying BambooHR integrations to production, covering API configuration, data integrity, monitoring, and rollback procedures.

Prerequisites

• Staging environment tested and verified
• Production BambooHR API key ready
• Deployment pipeline configured
• Monitoring and alerting infrastructure available

Instructions

Pre-Deployment Checklist

Authentication & Secrets

• Production API key created under a service account (not personal account)
• API key stored in secrets manager (AWS Secrets Manager / GCP Secret Manager / Vault)
• BAMBOOHR_COMPANY_DOMAIN set correctly for production
• Webhook secret stored securely
• Key rotation procedure documented and tested
• Old staging/test keys will not be deployed to production

API Integration Quality

• All API calls use Accept: application/json header
• Error handling covers all BambooHR HTTP statuses (400, 401, 403, 404, 503)
• X-BambooHR-Error-Message header parsed for error details
• Retry-After header honored on 503 responses
• Exponential backoff with jitter implemented for retries
• Request queue limits concurrent API calls (max 3-5 parallel)
• No hardcoded employee IDs, company domains, or API keys

Data Integrity

• Custom reports validated against expected field schema
• Employee directory sync handles new, updated, and terminated employees
• Date fields parsed consistently (YYYY-MM-DD format)
• Null/empty field handling tested (BambooHR returns null or "")
• Unicode employee names handled correctly
• Large directory tested (500+ employees)

Security & Compliance

• PII fields redacted from application logs
• Webhook signatures verified with HMAC-SHA256
• Only necessary BambooHR fields requested (least data principle)
• No SSN, salary, or restricted data stored without encryption at rest
• API access audit trail enabled

Health Check Endpoint

// api/health.ts
import { BambooHRClient, BambooHRApiError } from '../bamboohr/client';

interface HealthStatus {
  status: 'healthy' | 'degraded' | 'down';
  bamboohr: {
    connected: boolean;
    latencyMs: number;
    error?: string;
    employeeCount?: number;
  };
  timestamp: string;
}

export async function healthCheck(client: BambooHRClient): Promise<HealthStatus> {
  const start = Date.now();
  try {
    const dir = await client.getDirectory();
    return {
      status: 'healthy',
      bamboohr: {
        connected: true,
        latencyMs: Date.now() - start,
        employeeCount: dir.employees.length,
      },
      timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    };
  } catch (err) {
    const latency = Date.now() - start;
    const errMsg = err instanceof BambooHRApiError ? err.message : 'Unknown error';

    return {
      status: err instanceof BambooHRApiError && err.retryable ? 'degraded' : 'down',
      bamboohr: { connected: false, latencyMs: latency, error: errMsg },
      timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    };
  }
}

Monitoring & Alerting

// Recommended alert thresholds for BambooHR integrations
const ALERTS = {
  p1_critical: [
    { name: 'Auth failure', condition: '401/403 errors > 0', action: 'Page on-call' },
    { name: 'API down', condition: 'Health check fails 3x consecutive', action: 'Page on-call' },
  ],
  p2_high: [
    { name: 'Rate limited', condition: '503 errors > 3/min', action: 'Slack alert' },
    { name: 'High latency', condition: 'p99 > 5000ms', action: 'Slack alert' },
    { name: 'Sync failure', condition: 'Sync job fails', action: 'Slack + ticket' },
  ],
  p3_medium: [
    { name: 'Elevated errors', condition: '4xx errors > 10/hour', action: 'Log + daily review' },
    { name: 'Data mismatch', condition: 'Schema validation failures', action: 'Log + ticket' },
  ],
};

Gradual Rollout Strategy

#!/bin/bash
# deploy-bamboohr-integration.sh

echo "=== Pre-flight checks ==="
# 1. Verify BambooHR API is up
curl -sf "https://status.bamboohr.com" > /dev/null || { echo "BambooHR may be down!"; exit 1; }

# 2. Verify production credentials work
STATUS=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -u "${BAMBOOHR_API_KEY}:x" \
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
  "https://api.bamboohr.com/api/gateway.php/${BAMBOOHR_COMPANY_DOMAIN}/v1/employees/directory")
[ "$STATUS" -eq 200 ] || { echo "Auth check failed: $STATUS"; exit 1; }
echo "API auth: OK"

# 3. Deploy
echo "=== Deploying ==="
# Platform-specific deployment command here
# kubectl apply -f k8s/production.yaml
# fly deploy
# gcloud run deploy ...

# 4. Post-deploy health check
echo "=== Post-deploy verification ==="
sleep 10
curl -sf "https://your-app.com/api/health" | jq .bamboohr

Rollback Procedure

# Immediate rollback
# kubectl rollout undo deployment/bamboohr-integration
# fly releases rollback
# gcloud run services update-traffic --to-revisions=REVISION=100

# Verify rollback health
curl -sf "https://your-app.com/api/health" | jq .

Output

• Completed pre-deployment checklist
• Health check endpoint deployed
• Monitoring alerts configured
• Gradual rollout with pre-flight checks
• Documented rollback procedure

Error Handling

Alert	Condition	Severity	Response
Auth failure	401/403 from BambooHR	P1	Check API key; rotate if compromised
Rate limit storm	Continuous 503s	P2	Pause sync jobs; reduce request rate
Sync data gap	Missing employees in sync	P2	Run full resync; check changed-since
Schema mismatch	New/removed BambooHR fields	P3	Update field mappings; add defaults

Resources

• BambooHR Status Page
• BambooHR API Changes
• BambooHR Planned Changes

Next Steps

For version upgrades, see bamboohr-upgrade-migration.