Category: Workday

Workday Workday Prism Analytics Workday is a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software provider that offers a range of sophisticated reporting tools to help organizations make informed decisions. Although these tools are mature, they can only provide insights from data hosted within Workday. Organizations typically rely on multiple systems for their functioning, resulting in data being scattered across various platforms. For example, organizations may use Workday for their HR application while employing MyLearn as their learning application. Combining data from these systems has been a challenge, and this is where Prism Analytics excels. With Prism Analytics, Workday empowers organizations to import data from various systems, combine it with Workday data (e.g., HR/Finance/Payroll), and gain valuable insights for making informed, data-driven decisions. How is Workday Prism Analytics leveraged in most organizations? Numerous use cases exist across industries. To illustrate a few, let’s consider a realistic example: A travel industry organization utilized Prism Analytics to gauge and drive their customer care department’s employee performance within Workday. By harnessing the power of Prism, they combined HR and Finance data from Workday with call center data to make decisions about average call answer times, shift utilization, performance trends, and cost per call by location, agent, manager, and region, as well as customer satisfaction rates by cost center. Custom dashboards were built into Workday for managers to support employees in their customer care department effectively. Additionally, some customers integrate internal benchmarking tool data to make smarter decisions within Workday. For example, customers use the Workday Prism Analytics platform to incorporate data from third-party travel booking tools and internal benchmarking data. The resulting Travel & Expense (T&E) dashboard provides comprehensive tabs that display non-compliant purchases with their travel and expense policy and evaluate how well travel plans align with cost-saving practices. Furthermore, the dashboard offers in-depth insights into individual teams’ travel spending habits. Source : Community.workday.com  Another common use case across industries involves generating insights into employee health by importing worker health data from government portals and linking it to Absence Module data from Workday. This helps address questions about burnout vulnerabilities and manager performance in maintaining staff health and fitness. While employee sickness data is sensitive, organizations increasingly opt for a dual-dashboard strategy: one providing high-level aggregated data without revealing employee details, and another offering employee details to HR Advisory community members while maintaining role-based access constraints (e.g., HR Advisory of Netherlands will only have visibility of employees in the Netherlands, and not England, Germany). How does Workday Prism Analytics work? When considering Prism’s architecture, there are three main facets: 1 Connect and Integrate: This includes all mechanisms for importing data into Workday Prism from various databases for analysis. To inject data into Prism, you can use Workday Custom Reports (RaaS), Manual Load, SFTP, Studio Prism Connector, or Prism Analytics APIs. Data sources created from multiple databases can then be published to create reports and dashboards within Workday or used to inject data into BI Tools or Enterprise Data lakes. Below is the most common example used across industries to create insights into Employee Learning and Development . The screenshot explains how learning data from multiple systems is brought into Workday and merged with employee data to create learning history data sources. 2. Transform & Analyze: Workday’s Intelligent Pipelines form the base for the transformation phase. These pipelines are intuitive and provide the necessary capabilities for data preparatory activities, including offering user suggestions for selecting the primary key among data tables and predefined functions to maximize output with minimal time and data, reducing dependency on IT for complex transformations. 3. Manage & Administer: The Data Catalog stores all Prism artifacts. With numerous datasets, tables, and data sources, planning in advance to maintain the data is crucial. Workday offers a reportable data source containing metadata of all datasets and tables in Prism, providing the option to create custom reports and analyze the health of the Prism data catalog. Workday plans to introduce Workspaces, which will allow for more granular control and governance over artifacts related to specific projects or departments. Prism Automation To ensure seamless data integration without manual intervention, Workday provides users with various mechanisms to inject data into Prism and extract data from Workday Prism. Integration consultants play a crucial role in connecting systems (e.g., data from various systems to Workday Prism or data sent from Workday Prism to Enterprise Data Lakes). Here are a few examples: Example 1: Send CSV Data to Prism Analytics Workday Studio’s Prism Analytics component enables you to send CSV data to Workday Prism. This process requires creating an API client for secure interactions between external systems and Workday. By configuring a listener service in Workday Studio, you can automatically import files from an SFTP folder into Prism, eliminating manual work. Example 2: REST API for Prism The Prism Analytics REST API allows you to programmatically run data change activities created through the UI to alter the data in a Prism Analytics table. You can modify the data in a table or on a regular automated basis. URL: https://{hostname}/api/prismAnalytics/V3/{tenantname} Prism Security: When discussing data to and from Prism, it is essential to address data governance. One advantage of Workday Prism is the ability to extend the security model of Workday’s object model to Workday Prism. Each data source created in Workday Prism can be secured using a custom domain, giving administrators the flexibility to grant access to users based on their roles. Workday also offers flexibility in entity-based governance, allowing Prism admins to grant access to specific user groups while controlling their ability to view data of employees from only the cost centers they originally support. Conclusion With Prism Analytics, organizations can gain a comprehensive view of workforce, financial, and operational insights, capturing the value of essential data all within Workday. Prism Analytics is designed to handle large volumes of structured and unstructured data that traditional transaction systems cannot manage. It is 100% cloud-based and integrated with Workday. While Prism has solved many problems, making insights even more

Design Workday APIs and Authentication Workday’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) offer a powerful way for businesses to integrate their HR processes with external systems. In this blog post, we’ll explore the various Workday APIs and the authentication techniques that ensure a successful and secure data exchange. Understanding Workday APIs API stands for Application Programming Interface. In simple terms, APIs allow different applications to communicate with each other. Workday APIs consist of a set of web services that enable businesses to connect Workday HR management with their other applications. Workday offers a wide range of APIs, including SOAP and REST APIs, allowing businesses to create custom applications. Real-life Use Cases of Workday APIs Before diving into technical details, let’s explore some real-life scenarios to demonstrate how Workday APIs can be used in practice: Employee Discounts: Imagine a retail store offering a 5% discount for all its employees. When an employee tries to claim the discount at the billing counter, the system sends a REST request to Workday to verify the employee’s eligibility. This lightweight transaction is carried out using REST API. Learning Management Systems: Suppose your organization uses a learning management system (LMS) for employee training. You want to create calendar events for employees when they enroll in a course. In this case, the SOAP API can be used to perform the task with minimal coding. But wait a minute… how is this possible? How Do Workday APIs Work? Workday APIs follow a standard request/response model, where a client application sends a request to the server, and the server responds with the desired information. Workday APIs use standard authentication and authorization mechanisms, including OAuth 2.0, to ensure secure data exchange. Workday also offers a metadata API, which allows businesses to discover available APIs and their schemas. Documentation for SOAP-based web services, including WSDL and XML Schemas, can be found on the Workday website here. To test the web services, you can use SOAP UI, a free tool for testing web services, after downloading the WSDL. Note: You’ll need an account in a Workday tenant with proper authorizations to extract data from or send data to Workday. Authentication: Ensuring Secure Data Exchange with Workday APIs Workday supports both SOAP and REST API technology standards. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and REST (Representational State Transfer) are web service architectures that facilitate communication between different software systems. However, there are some key differences between the two. SOAP is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over a network using HTTP, SMTP, or other application-level protocols. It heavily relies on XML and WSDL (Web Services Description Language) for communication and is typically used in enterprise environments. SOAP offers more comprehensive security and transaction features than REST, making it better suited for complex business transactions. Workday supports Basic, SAML, X509, and OAuth authentication methods for SOAP. Example of Data Exchange using SOAP protocols A Simple Example is shown below which is a snippet from a Workday Studio Integration which collects Candidate Data from Greenhouse (Recruiting System) and initiates Hiring in Workday. The picture above demonstrates Workday’s ability to call web services of third party applications, as well as web services hosted in Workday using Workday’s Integration Framework. REST, conversely, is an architectural style that uses HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE to interact with resources. REST is simpler and more flexible than SOAP, making it easier to implement and maintain. Workday supports OAuth authentication for REST. API Clients will need to be created in Workday for any application to be able to collect/post data from Workday using REST protocols. API Clients are created as below and all the controls for the tokens, functional areas and restrictions based on IP addresses can be configured as shown in the screenshot below. Below is a table explaining different authentication mechanisms that Workday provides for data exchange using SOAP/REST. Authentication Method SOAP REST How is User Identity Validated Basic Yes Username and Password SAML Yes SAML Assertion containing Username X509 Yes Username and X509 Certificate OAuth Yes Yes Access Token based on OAuth grant type Conclusion Workday APIs empower businesses to integrate their HR processes with external systems, streamlining operations, reducing manual effort and errors, and improving data accuracy. Additionally, Workday APIs offer the flexibility to build custom applications tailored to specific needs. By leveraging Workday APIs, businesses can enhance their HR processes, cut HR costs, and remain competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment. So, get your APIs talking and let them handle the heavy lifting.

Workday How did the pandemic change the course of the Future of Work? The post pandemic landscape has had a significant impact on the workforce in several ways. Many companies have shifted to remote work, with employees working from home due to lockdowns and social distancing measures. This has required companies to adapt their technology and management practices to accommodate remote work. In workplaces where employees cannot work remotely, the pandemic has led to changes in the physical workspace, with measures such as social distancing, increased sanitation, and the use of personal protective equipment. The pandemic has also caused economic disruption, with many businesses shutting down temporarily or permanently, and many workers experiencing job losses, reduced hours, or reduced pay. Significant impact on mental health, with many workers experiencing stress and anxiety due to the uncertainty and disruption caused by the pandemic which has blurred the boundaries between work and home life. Overall, the pandemic has accelerated trends that were already underway, such as the use of technology and remote work, and has required companies and workers to adapt quickly to new ways of working. The future of work is likely to be influenced by many factors. These include: Remote work and distributed teams: The pandemic has shown that remote work can be effective, and many companies are likely to continue to embrace remote work and distributed teams as a way to access talent and reduce costs. Hybrid work arrangements: Many companies are likely to adopt hybrid work arrangements, where employees work both remotely and in the office, in order to balance the benefits of remote work with the benefits of in-person collaboration. Technology-driven work: Technology will continue to play a key role in the future of work, with more companies using automation, AI, and machine learning to streamline processes and improve efficiency. Upskilling and reskilling: As technology and automation continue to transform the workforce, companies and workers will need to invest in upskilling and reskilling to ensure they have the skills required for the future of work. Well-being and flexibility: Companies are likely to prioritize the well-being and flexibility of their employees, recognizing the importance of work-life balance and the need to support employees’ mental health and well-being. Diversity, equity, and inclusion: As companies become more distributed and diverse, there will be a growing focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, with companies striving to create inclusive cultures that support all employees. What will the office of the future look like? Since the way we work is changing, and the office of the future will look very different from the traditional 9-to-5, cubicle-bound workplace that many of us are used to, organizations need to adapt to the changing nature of work and prepare for the office of the future to stay competitive, attract top talent, and create a workplace that fosters innovation, creativity, and collaboration. Here are six steps that companies can take to prepare for the office of the future: Embrace flexible work arrangements: One of the defining features of the office of the future is that it will be more flexible, with employees working remotely, from home, or in co-working spaces. Companies need to start planning for this shift by investing in the technology and infrastructure needed to support remote work and exploring new ways of measuring productivity and performance. This could include investing in cloud-based software, communication tools, and collaboration platforms that enable remote workers to stay connected and productive. Redesign the physical office space: The office of the future will require a more flexible and adaptable physical space that accommodates new ways of working, including hot-desking, shared spaces, and collaboration areas. Companies may need to redesign their physical office space to support these new work arrangements, investing in new furniture, layouts, and technology to enable a more mobile, flexible, and collaborative work environment. Invest in technology: Technology will be a key enabler of the office of the future, and companies need to be prepared to invest in new tools and solutions to support their employees. This could include cloud-based software, collaboration tools, and automation technologies to help streamline processes and increase productivity. Companies should also invest in cybersecurity measures to ensure that remote workers can access the company’s systems securely. Prioritize employee experience: The office of the future will be focused on the employee experience, with companies putting more emphasis on creating a workplace that fosters engagement, creativity, and innovation. This could involve investing in employee development programs, flexible work arrangements, and wellness initiatives that support the physical and mental wellbeing of employees. By prioritizing the employee experience, companies can attract and retain top talent and create a workplace that inspires and motivates its employees. Embrace diversity and inclusion: As companies become more global, diverse, and dispersed, it will be important to prioritize diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This could involve developing new policies and practices to support a more diverse workforce, investing in training and development to build cultural competency, and creating an inclusive workplace culture that fosters creativity, innovation, and collaboration. By embracing diversity and inclusion, companies can tap into a wider pool of talent and benefit from a broader range of perspectives and ideas. Emphasize data-driven decision making: In the office of the future, companies will need to be more data-driven, using real-time data and analytics to make better decisions and respond more quickly to changing market conditions. This could involve investing in data analytics tools, training employees to use data effectively, and creating a culture that values and prioritizes data-driven decision making. By leveraging data effectively, companies can gain a competitive edge and make better decisions based on real-time insights. The office of the future will require a new approach to work that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, employee experience, technology, diversity and inclusion, and data-driven decision making. By taking these steps, companies can prepare for the office of the future and create a workplace that is adaptable, innovative, and responsive to the changing needs of its employees and the market. How

Web design Mastering Workday Reporting; Tips for Effortless Insights and Analysis Workday, a leading cloud-based enterprise platform, empowers organizations with robust reporting capabilities, allowing users to extract valuable insights for informed decision-making. Whether you are an HR professional, a finance manager, or an executive, mastering Workday reporting can significantly enhance your ability to analyze data efficiently. In this guide, we’ll explore some invaluable tips to help you unlock the full potential of Workday reporting. Various Categories of Reports in Workday Workday offers a versatile reporting framework that caters to various organizational needs. Here are different types of reports in Workday, each serving a specific purpose: Standard Reports: Description: Workday provides a range of pre-built standard reports that cover common business requirements. Use Case: Standard reports are useful for obtaining quick insights into standard HR, financial, and operational metrics without the need for extensive customization. Custom Reports: Description: Workday allows users to create various custom reports tailored to their specific requirements using the Report Writer tool. Use Case: Custom reports are ideal when organizations need unique insights or when standard reports do not fully meet their reporting needs. Advanced Workday Reports An advanced report is a workhorse for generating in-depth and customized reports in Workday. It’s the go-to option for most reporting needs within the platform. Here’s what makes it powerful: Detailed Data: Advanced reports allow you to pull data from multiple Workday business objects, giving you a comprehensive view. Think of business objects as categories of information, like employees, finances, or training. By joining these objects, you can create reports that analyze relationships between different data sets. Filtering and Sorting: These reports offer granular control over the data you see. You can apply filters to focus on specific criteria, like a particular department or date range. Additionally, multi-level sorting lets you organize the information in a way that best suits your analysis. Complex Design: Advanced reports aren’t limited to basic tables. You can create reports with multiple heading levels and subtotals, making them ideal for complex data presentations. Sharing and Security: Once you’ve built your report, you can control who has access to view it. Sharing options allow you to distribute the report to relevant colleagues. In summary, advanced reports in Workday are a powerful tool for creating insightful and customized reports that answer your specific business questions. Composite Reports Description: Composite reports combine data from multiple sources into a single report, providing a holistic view of interconnected information. Use Case: Ideal for analyzing complex relationships between different data sets, such as combining HR and financial data for a comprehensive organizational overview. Trending Reports Description: Trend reports display data over a specific period, allowing users to identify patterns, fluctuations, or trends over time. Use Case: Useful for tracking changes in key metrics, employee performance, or financial data across different time intervals. Matrix Reports Description: Matrix reports organize data in a grid format, allowing users to analyze and compare information across multiple dimensions. Use Case: Effective for cross-tabulating data, matrix reports are beneficial when exploring relationships between different variables. Enhancing Workday Report Writer Capabilities Dynamic Column Adjustments Workday users can refine their reports by modifying displayed fields through the “Columns” tab. This involves the use of +/- icons for adding or removing rows, adjusting row order with up and down arrows, selecting specific fields for display, and more. Efficient Prompt Filters Workday customers editing custom reports can harness the power of Report Writer functionality by enabling “Save Parameters” in the “Advanced” tab. This feature allows users to save and reuse prompt filters when creating custom report scenarios or running new reports. Streamlined Standard Report Copies Report copying is made versatile in Workday. Users can copy a report by executing related actions from a Standard Report or utilize the “Copy Standard Report to Custom Report” task. It’s essential to note that only reports generated with the Workday Report Writer tool are eligible for copying to a custom report. Organizing with Report Tags Workday users can employ report tags to categorize and locate reports within the system efficiently. When searching for a custom report tag name in Report Writer, all relevant reports with associated data will be displayed. To meet specific needs for new reports, users can create fresh report tags by selecting “Create Report Tag” from the “Report Tags” field. How Matrix Reports are Essential on Dashboards Big Picture at a Glance Matrix reports present data in a tabular format, offering a comprehensive overview of key information within a single frame. This allows viewers to quickly grasp trends and connections between various data points, gaining valuable insights at first glance. Dive Deeper When Needed While providing a holistic view, Matrix reports maintain drillability. Users can click on specific data points to access additional details and deeper layers of information within the underlying advanced report. This enables flexible exploration without overwhelming viewers with excessive detail on the dashboard itself. Space Efficiency with Maximum Impact Compared to displaying the entire advanced report, a Matrix report occupies less space while still conveying crucial information. This allows you to incorporate several key insights onto a single dashboard, creating a more comprehensive picture of organizational performance. Clarity through Structure The organized structure of Matrix reports, with clearly labeled rows and columns, helps viewers understand the data quickly and easily. This is especially beneficial in a dashboard environment where users might be rapidly scanning multiple reports for specific information. Navigating Workday Reports: A Search Bar Made Simple Type and Search Enter keywords or phrases related to the report you’re looking for in the Search bar. Results Breakdown Workday presents your search results in two sections: Tasks and ReportsThis section prioritizes reports that directly match your search query. These are the reports you can run immediately. All of WorkdayThis section displays broader results, including object definitions that might be related to your search. While you can’t directly run reports from here, these object definitions can be helpful for understanding the underlying data structure. Sitemaps FunctionSitemaps act as a navigational