LINQ to UKG Pro WFM Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the UKG Pro WFM via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for UKG Pro WFM. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData UKG Pro WFM Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Start by setting the Profile connection property to the location of the UKGProWFM Profile on disk (e.g. C:\profiles\UKGProWFM.apip). Next, set the ProfileSettings connection property to the connection string for UKGProWFM (see below).

   UKGProWFM API Profile Settings

   UKG Pro Workforce Management uses OAuth 2.0 with the Resource Owner Password Credentials grant (grant_type=password) to authorize access to the API. Unlike most OAuth-based profiles, this does not use a browser redirect/authorization-code step: the driver exchanges your UKG Pro WFM username, password, client ID, and client secret directly for an access token.

   Set the following connection properties to authenticate:

   • AuthScheme: Set this to OAuthPassword.
   • Host: Set this to the hostname of your UKG Pro Workforce Management datacenter/tenant (for example, yourcompany.mykronos.com). Do not include the protocol (https://) or a trailing slash.
   • OAuthClientId: Set this to the client ID issued for your UKG Pro Workforce Management OAuth application.
   • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret issued for your UKG Pro Workforce Management OAuth application.
   • User: Set this to your UKG Pro Workforce Management username.
   • Password: Set this to your UKG Pro Workforce Management password.

   Access tokens are obtained from https://{Host}/api/authentication/access_token. Refresh tokens issued by UKG Pro Workforce Management expire after 7 days; if a refresh attempt fails because the refresh token itself has expired, the driver must re-authenticate with your User/Password credentials to obtain a new access token.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Profile=C:\profiles\UKGProWFM.apip;AuthScheme=OAuthPassword;ProfileSettings='Host=yourcompany.mykronos.com;User=your_username;Password=your_password;';OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;


5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting APIEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

APIEntities context = new APIEntities();

var employeesQuery = from employees in context.Employees
  select employees;

foreach (var result in employeesQuery) {
  Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.PersonNumber);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.