How to Build an ETL App for UKG Pro WFM Data in Python with CData

Jerod Johnson
Jerod Johnson
Director, Technology Evangelism
Create ETL applications and real-time data pipelines for UKG Pro WFM data in Python with petl.

The rich ecosystem of Python modules lets you get to work quickly and integrate your systems more effectively. With the CData API Driver for Python and the petl framework, you can build UKG Pro WFM-connected applications and pipelines for extracting, transforming, and loading UKG Pro WFM data. This article shows how to connect to UKG Pro WFM with the CData Python Connector and use petl and pandas to extract, transform, and load UKG Pro WFM data.

With built-in, optimized data processing, the CData Python Connector offers unmatched performance for interacting with live UKG Pro WFM data in Python. When you issue complex SQL queries from UKG Pro WFM, the driver pushes supported SQL operations, like filters and aggregations, directly to UKG Pro WFM and utilizes the embedded SQL engine to process unsupported operations client-side (often SQL functions and JOIN operations).

Connecting to UKG Pro WFM Data

Connecting to UKG Pro WFM data looks just like connecting to any relational data source. Create a connection string using the required connection properties. For this article, you will pass the connection string as a parameter to the create_engine function.

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.

After installing the CData UKG Pro WFM Connector, follow the procedure below to install the other required modules and start accessing UKG Pro WFM through Python objects.

Install Required Modules

Use the pip utility to install the required modules and frameworks:

pip install petl
pip install pandas

Build an ETL App for UKG Pro WFM Data in Python

Once the required modules and frameworks are installed, we are ready to build our ETL app. Code snippets follow, but the full source code is available at the end of the article.

First, be sure to import the modules (including the CData Connector) with the following:

import petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.api as mod

You can now connect with a connection string. Use the connect function for the CData UKG Pro WFM Connector to create a connection for working with UKG Pro WFM data. 

cnxn = mod.connect("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;")

Create a SQL Statement to Query UKG Pro WFM

Use SQL to create a statement for querying UKG Pro WFM. In this article, we read data from the Employees entity. 

sql = "SELECT PersonNumber, UserName FROM Employees WHERE PersonId = '12345'"

Extract, Transform, and Load the UKG Pro WFM Data

With the query results stored in a DataFrame, we can use petl to extract, transform, and load the UKG Pro WFM data. In this example, we extract UKG Pro WFM data, sort the data by the UserName column, and load the data into a CSV file.

Loading UKG Pro WFM Data into a CSV File

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'UserName')

etl.tocsv(table2,'employees_data.csv')

With the CData API Driver for Python, you can work with UKG Pro WFM data just like you would with any database, including direct access to data in ETL packages like petl.

Free Trial & More Information

Download a free, 30-day trial of the CData API Driver for Python to start building Python apps and scripts with connectivity to UKG Pro WFM data. Reach out to our Support Team if you have any questions.


Full Source Code


import petl as etl
import pandas as pd
import cdata.api as mod

cnxn = mod.connect("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;")

sql = "SELECT PersonNumber, UserName FROM Employees WHERE PersonId = '12345'"

table1 = etl.fromdb(cnxn,sql)

table2 = etl.sort(table1,'UserName')

etl.tocsv(table2,'employees_data.csv')

Ready to get started?

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