News to Know – Volume 2, Edition 5, July 2025
July 25, 2025Draft and deploy – Azure Firewall policy changes [Preview]
July 25, 2025
Introduction
Modern systems must be modular and interoperable by design. Integration is no longer a feature, it’s a requirement. Developers are expected to build architectures that connect easily with third-party platforms, but too often, core systems are designed in isolation. This disconnect creates friction for downstream teams and slows delivery.
At Microsoft, SaaS platforms like SAP SuccessFactors and Eightfold support Talent Acquisition by handling functions such as requisition tracking, application workflows, and interview coordination. These tools help reduce costs and free up engineering focus for high-priority areas like Azure and AI. The real challenge is integrating them with internal systems such as Demand Planning, Offer Management, and Employee Central.
This blog post outlines a strategy centered around two foundational components: an Integration and Orchestration Layer, and a Messaging Platform. Together, these enable real-time communication, consistent data models, and scalable integration.
While Talent Acquisition is the use case here, the architectural patterns apply broadly across domains. Whether you’re embedding AI pipelines, managing edge deployments, or building platform services, thoughtful integration needs to be built into the foundation, not bolted on later.
Opportunities with third-party integration
Data Format Incompatibility |
Data Validation & Duplication |
Version Control & Auditing |
Real-Time Distribution |
API Limitations & Performance Bottlenecks
|
Security & Availability |
Strategic Solutions:
Integration Platform
This platform serves as a robust integration layer, orchestrating timely and secure updates from internal enterprise systems to a variety of external SaaS solutions, ensuring data is updated instantaneously to meet operational demands. By ensuring reliable, secure, and timely data exchange, it enables our business to operate seamlessly and adapt quickly to changes. The platform’s architecture supports efficient adaptation to system updates and provides transitions—for example, maintaining uninterrupted integration during transition to new ATS in future. This approach optimizes business processes, maximizes the utility of both in-house and third-party systems, and upholds the high standards necessary for modern enterprise operations.
Abstraction Layer Example: When SuccessFactors changes the schema of its offer entity, the Abstraction layer ensures that MS systems continue to communicate using the familiar CDM format, shielding them from underlying schema changes. |
Orchestration Engine Example: In SuccessFactors, the Offer object is composed of two standard objects and three distinct custom objects. As a result, a single call from any tenant—such as MS Recruit (MSR), the offer management system—will be orchestrated by the platform into 5 separate API calls to update all necessary components within SuccessFactors. |
Cache API (Recruiting API) Example: SuccessFactors/ICIMS will be temporarily unavailable at regular intervals due to its scheduled maintenance, internal tools like MSR Offer can still function by retrieving essential data from the cache. |
Performance Optimization Example: To enhance system performance and minimize latency, the platform orchestrates the 5 requisite API calls in parallel, utilizing robust asynchronous processing capabilities. This strategy not only optimizes the efficiency of sub-object updates but also sustains low response times and a seamless user experience, even amidst high-volume activity. |
Security & Availability Example: Azure Front Door provides high availability and load balancing to maintain system performance and security and Service Bus ensures reliable message delivery even during high traffic periods. |
API Call Management Example: Leveraging Azure monitoring capabilities, the platform raises proactive alerts when API consumption approaches defined thresholds. This real-time visibility empowers teams to take timely, preventive action before limits are exceeded, safeguarding system performance and cost management. Moreover, the solution offers granular insights by identifying which specific processes are driving the highest number of API calls. This level of detail enables targeted optimization and informed decision-making, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and operational risks are minimized. |
Messaging Platform
The messaging platform serves as a critical integration layer, enabling real-time, asynchronous acquisition of essential data from external sources and its reliable distribution across internal systems through multiple delivery channels such as – Azure Service Bus, Webhook, Azure Data Lake. By facilitating near real-time data transfer, the platform accelerates agile business processes and enables teams to respond efficiently to changing information. For example, Success Factors enable immediate onboarding initiation in Employee Central, streamlining business workflows. Critically, the timely availability of this data ensures that downstream systems can maintain business continuity, even in the face of upstream disruptions or outages.
Real-Time Synchronization Example: when recruiter marked as initiate onboarding in Success Factors, the Employee Central system receives this update in real time, triggering onboarding processes without delay. This eliminates lag in business workflows and supports agile operational decisions |
Common Data Model (CDM) Example: Employee IDs are mapped across systems—External ID in iCIMS, Personnel Number in SF—to a unified Employee ID used internally. |
Robust Data Distribution
By integrating these distinct channels, the platform guarantees the seamless, secure, and timely flow of business-critical data throughout the organization, supporting both day-to-day operations and strategic analysis. |
Data Validation & Cleansing Example: If duplicate candidate profiles are detected, the system automatically cleans and reconciles the data |
Version Control & Auditing Example: If SF retires a field like “Graduation Flag,” the platform ensures downstream systems continue to function without errors. |
Message Replay Capability: Example: This capability ensures that critical business processes remain robust, even in the event of system outages or data synchronization issues |
Outcomes
By implementing these strategic platforms, Microsoft has:
- Reduced integration complexity and time-to-market for third-party integrations.
- Consistently validated, high-quality, and real-time data across all Talent Acquisition systems.
- Enhanced system resilience, performance, and security throughout the integration architecture.
- Enabled scalable and future-proof architecture for Talent Acquisition.
This solution was developed and deployed by the RPI engineering team (rpengteam@microsoft.com)