Connecting External APIs to Oracle HCM Using VBCS Service Connections

Oracle Visual Builder Cloud Service (VBCS) is a powerful tool for extending HCM with custom UI components. One of its most useful features is the Service Connection — it lets you call any REST API and display the results directly within your HCM pages.

When to Use VBCS Service Connections

• Displaying predictions from an ML model (e.g. attrition risk score)
• Pulling data from a third-party HR system in real-time
• Triggering an external workflow from within HCM
• Showing live leave balances from a custom calculation engine

Creating a Service Connection — Steps

1. Open VBCS → Navigate to your application → Services tab
2. Click + Service Connection → Choose Define by Endpoint
3. Enter your REST API URL (e.g. your Azure ML endpoint)
4. Set Authentication: Bearer Token or Basic Auth depending on your API
5. Define the Request schema (JSON body) and Response schema
6. Click Test to verify the connection returns expected data
7. Bind the response fields to your page components

// Example request payload for Azure ML attrition endpoint
{
  "input_data": {
    "columns": ["tenure_months","absence_count","perf_rating","grade"],
    "data": [[36, 8, 3, "M3"]]
  }
}
// Response
{ "result": [0.73] // 73% attrition risk }

✦ Always handle the case where the external API is unavailable. Add a fallback value or a "Data not available" message in your VBCS component — otherwise the HCM page will show a blank tile with no explanation.