Introduction to Workday Integration

Integrations are crucial when communicating external systems with Workday. To be able to say you master them means that you understand how data can be imported to or exported from Workday. Thankfully, there are predefined rules of how that data must look like, and public interfaces you can access anytime you need to build an integration.

Workday provides single-architecture, cloud-based enterprise application and management suites that combine finance,HR,and analytics into a single system.Workday Integration is designed to balance high-security standards,agile updates,powerful insights,and intuitive UI across devices.

 

What are the main types of Workday Integrations and how do you select which solution to use?

  • The main types of integrations are Workday Studio Integration, Enterprise Information Builder (EIB) Integration and Cloud Connect Integration.
  • When deciding over which tool to use we need to take into account some factors; whenever you take in the design of an integration, from the requirements you should follow a roadmap, here is an example of it:
  1. Is the solution already pre-built? Am I connecting to a third-party vendor with a solution already in place? – If yes, most likely you will choose a Core Connector.
  2. Does this integration just need to export or import some data into Workday? – If yes, then most likely you need to go with EIBs.
  3. Do I need to execute several rules, and reports to get the data and calculate the results I need? For example: Determining payroll between Exempt and Non-Exempt employees, calculate deductions, etc. – If yes, then most likely you need a Workday Studio Integration.

This technical document examines Workday’s Core Connectors and Documentation Transformation technology which provide pre-built templates that allow developers to implement integration systems. Core Connectors address the majority of the effort to integrate with third-party endpoints. They can be implemented as delivered or can provide the foundation upon to which to extend this functionality leveraging Workday’s Integration Cloud Platform. Core Connector usage provides a rapid, flexible and re-usable method for integrating with Workday, ensuring that external systems receive only the data that you want to expose. Document Transformation templates incorporate XSLT code providing the developer the capability to transform both data structure and content of the XML document to meet client requirements. As part of Document Transformation this class will cover Workday specific processing instructions known as Element Transformation and Validation (ETV) and XML To Text (XTT).Workday Connectors are currently available for:

  • Benefits 
  • HCM 
  • Workday Payroll 
  • Third-Party Payroll 
  • Financials 
  • Spend Management 

Workday Connectors

  • Outbound Integration: Another system is target
  • Inbound Integration: Workday is target for receiving data

Steps to building a connector integrationIntegration systems are tenanted definitions of a Workday integration. An integration system has the following building blocks:

  • Integration Template Establishes the framework for data exchange through a collection of integration services.
  • Integration Service Contains a set of attributes and maps related to a specific integration function. Integration services use XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) to convert Workday XML into a format that an external system can read.
  • Integration Attribute Provides one or more tenanted values for a data element in Workday.
  • Integration Map Defines relationships between Workday values and external system values. Examples are maps for benefit coverage levels, marital status, gender, job classifications, and locations.
  • Transaction Log Provides a record of business processes and events in Workday. Integrations can subscribe to specific transaction log events to capture the changes to employee data that are relevant to an external system.

Workday Integration Cloud

Workday’s Integration Cloud Platform is a complete Integration Platform as-a–Service (iPaaS) for building, deploying, and managing integrations to and from Workday. It provides a proven, enterprise-class platform that consists of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) embedded as part of the Workday platform with associated tools directly within the Workday UI for managing and monitoring integrations. The Workday Integration Cloud also provides pre-built and delivered connections to non-Workday systems, as well as tools for developing custom integrations. All integrations are deployed to and run on Workday without the need for any on-premise middleware.Workday integration cloudAdvantages of using Workday for IntegrationClearly, you can build any integration you need to the Workday API using your own middleware technology; MuleSoft, Boomi, TIBCO, or Oracle Fusion Middleware are just a few of the middleware tools used by Workday customers. However, there are several major advantages to using the Workday Integration Cloud:-Integrations surface naturally inside the Workday user interface. You can view the integrations, launch them, schedule them, secure them, include them in Workday business processes, configure notifications around them, and audit and log them— all from within the Workday user experience.-Both packaged and custom integrations run on Workday software and hardware infrastructure in our data centers. You do not need to license or use any on-premise integration middleware platform, which can greatly simplify the deployment and management of integrations especially when the majority of the integrations are connecting to Workday-Finally Workday’s integration tools are also highly optimized for efficiently building integrations to and from Workday. Purpose-built packaged components handle much of the plumbing aspects of integration-building, freeing you to focus on the critical business logic.Overall, Workday’s packaged integrations and tools are widely proven in a variety of demanding situations and offer a lower-cost, lower-risk path to delivering needed integrations in support of your deployment.Integration Building blocks:Integration building blocks

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