Using Auto Draft for Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud

This documentation covers Auto Draft for Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud. For Bullhorn ATS documentation, see Auto Draft for Submittals.

Auto Draft automatically creates VMS submittal drafts when a job submission in Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud (Salesforce ATS) reaches a configured status. This feature eliminates the manual step of opening Sync to create a draft, reducing submittal time from minutes to seconds.

For configuration information, see Configuring Auto Draft for Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud.

Recruiter Experience

  1. Moving a candidate to a configured submission stage in Salesforce ATS triggers draft creation.

  2. Draft appears in Sync for the VMS job.

  3. Drafts are pre-populated with mapped candidate and submission data.

  4. Deleting the job submission in Salesforce soft-deletes the corresponding draft.

Full Workflow

When a recruiter creates or updates a job submission in Salesforce ATS, and Auto Draft is enabled:

  1. Salesforce fires a Change Data Capture (CDC) event on the submission record.

  2. Sync receives the event in near real-time via CDC push — no polling delay.

  3. Sync validates:

    • Submission status matches one of the configured trigger statuses.

    • VMS job exists in Sync database.

    • No duplicate draft already exists for this submission record.

    • Position has an existing submittal form.

  4. Sync creates or matches the candidate record.

  5. Sync creates a draft submittal with auto-populated fields based on submittal mappings.

  6. Draft becomes available in Sync for the recruiter to edit and submit.

If Auto Draft is disabled:

  • Sync stops processing CDC events for this account's submissions.

  • No new drafts are created.

  • Existing drafts remain.

No manual subscription management is required. Sync automatically starts and stops the CDC listener when the feature is enabled or disabled. Changes take effect within one minute.

Event Reporting

Event reporting can be found under Admin Tools > Account Reporting. The following data is tracked:

  • CDC event receipt (success/failure)

  • Draft creation from submission events (success/failure)

FAQ

What is Change Data Capture (CDC)?

CDC is Salesforce's real-time event streaming feature. When a record is created, updated, or deleted in Salesforce, CDC pushes an event to subscribers immediately — no polling required. Sync uses this to detect new job submissions the moment they are saved.

Why are there three separate configuration fields (Entity, Status Field, Statuses)?

Different Salesforce accounts may use different objects for job submissions and different fields for tracking status. This three-step configuration lets Sync work with your specific Salesforce data model rather than assuming a fixed schema.

What happens if I change the ATS Submission Entity after it has been configured?

Changing the entity resets the ATS Submission Status Field and Job Submission Create Auto Draft On Status — you must reconfigure both. No existing drafts are affected, but Sync will stop matching new events until the configuration is saved again.

What happens if I change the configured trigger statuses?

The CDC listener continues to receive all submission events, but drafts are only created when submissions match the newly saved statuses.

Can I map custom Salesforce submission fields to draft fields?

Yes, through submittal mappings. Configure mappings in Admin Tools to control which Salesforce fields populate which VMS fields in the draft.

What if a recruiter creates a submission before the VMS form exists?

The draft will not be created. The VMS form must exist in Sync before the submission event is processed. If a form is added later, the recruiter would need to re-save the submission record in Salesforce to trigger a new CDC event.

How does this differ from the Bullhorn Auto Draft?

The recruiter experience is the same — a draft appears automatically. The difference is under the hood: Bullhorn uses API subscriptions that Sync polls every 20 seconds; Salesforce uses CDC push events that arrive in near real-time. Salesforce also requires configuring which object and field to watch, since Salesforce schemas are more customizable than Bullhorn's.

How do I troubleshoot this feature?

See Troubleshooting Auto Draft for Bullhorn Recruitment Cloud for full instructions.