What the Sona integration does
The Sona integration keeps your staff audience in Airship up to date automatically. Every day it reads your active employees from Sona and creates or updates a matching contact in Airship — and when someone leaves, it removes their contact for you.
There are no spreadsheets to upload and nothing to run by hand. Once it's switched on, your Airship staff data stays in step with Sona.
What syncs to Airship
Each day we bring across the details Airship needs to contact and segment your staff:
Name — first and last name
Email — used as the contact's email address
Mobile number — for SMS
Site / location — the staff member's primary location in Sona
Job title — their role
Start Date — their starting date
Job title does two things in Airship. It files the contact into a Job Title group, so you can target people by role, and it's also saved as a profile field. Alongside it we store three more profile fields you can segment and personalise on:
start date
employee number and
primary location.
A staff member needs an email address in Sona to sync — see the FAQs below.
How often it syncs
The integration runs once a day, automatically. Each run refreshes your active staff list and updates their Airship contacts, so changes you make in Sona — a new starter, a change of site, a new role — appear in Airship the next day. You don't need to trigger anything.
How leavers are handled
When a staff member's employment ends in Sona, the integration removes their contact from Airship automatically — usually within a day or two of their last working day. Every run re-checks the last few days, so a leaver is never missed even if a run is skipped. You don't need to delete anyone by hand.
Getting set up
Setup is handled with your Airship Technical Success contact. To switch the integration on, we'll need API access to your Sona account — an API token so Airship can read your staff data.
Once that's in place we enable the daily sync and confirm your staff are flowing through correctly. To get started, contact your Airship account manager or Technical Success team.
FAQs & troubleshooting
A staff member isn't showing in Airship — why?
A staff member isn't showing in Airship — why?
The usual reasons are: they have no email address in Sona (an email is required to create a contact); they've left the business (their contact is removed); or their site hasn't been mapped yet. If it's the last one, speak to your Technical Success contact.
I changed someone's role or site. When does Airship update?
I changed someone's role or site. When does Airship update?
On the next daily sync.
Why is a staff member in an "Unknown Role" group?
Why is a staff member in an "Unknown Role" group?
Every staff member is always placed in a Job Title group. When their role in Sona isn't recognised yet — usually a brand-new role that hasn't been picked up — they sit in Unknown Role, then move to the correct group on a later sync. If someone stays in Unknown Role, contact Technical Success.
Who do I contact for help?
Who do I contact for help?
Your Airship account manager or Technical Success team.