Workday EXTEND

WORKDAY EXTEND

by

Overview :

Workday Extend gives us more control. We can make custom apps using different Workday resources like HR and finance. These apps keep the Workday look. We can use our favorite tools and languages to build them. They’ll still have access to Workday’s features. With Workday Extend, We can talk between users, bots, and the app easily. Plus, these apps stay safe even with updates.

Workday Extend - i8cloud

Workday Extend allows us :

  • Read/write Workday data via REST APIs, including human resources, financial, student, payroll, and more.
  • Build apps that have the Workday look-and-feel.
  • Build external apps that use the platform services but are built using languages, tools and frameworks of our choice.
  • Build feature-rich apps using the platform’s presentation, data, conversation services, and more.
  • Data services like Workday Query Language (WQL) that allow you another means to read Workday data.
  • Conversation services that enable communication between the users, a bot, and the Workday app.
  • Create apps that use the Workday organizational and security models.
  • Build apps that are “update safe.”

Workday Extend Services :

Workday Extend provides many tools and services that we can use when building apps. One category of services is named Presentation Services (PS). Apps that use Presentation Services:

  • Are created using the Workday Extend plug-in for IntelliJ.
  • Have pages and metadata that are defined using JSON.
  • Make REST API calls to read and write Workday and non-Workday data.
  • Run in the same Workday Client as the core Workday app.

Types Of Apps we can create using Workday Extend : 

  1. Custom apps
    • Use Workday Extend Presentation Services in order to build the User Interface (UI).
    • Use the many REST APIs provided by the platform for reading and writing Workday data, i.e. Workers, Expenses, etc.

2. Custom apps with external data are the same as custom apps but include the ability to read and write non-Workday data using REST APIs.

3. External apps

    • Are written with any Integrated Development Environment (IDE), and can use languages like Java, JavaScript, Python, C#, etc.
    • Can read and write data using both Workday REST APIs and external REST APIs.
    • Could be a desktop app, a web app, or run on a mobile device.

Workday Extend App Architecture :

The graphic represents the app architecture of Workday Extend.

  • Both custom and external apps are represented.
  • The platform has a service known as the API Gateway.
    • Simplifies authentication and routing for apps.
    • Runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
  • The box with the Workday logo at the top represents what is running within Workday. The main service is Presentation Services, which:
    • Allows you to create apps that look and function like the delivered Workday app.
    • Interface, through REST APIs, with the Workday Object Management Server (OMS), to read/write Workday data.
    • Can access external, third-party data using REST web services.
    • Runs your custom apps within the Workday Client.
  • You have access to other platform services like Data Services, where you can:
    • Read Workday data using the Workday Query Language.
    • Read Workday data using the Reports as a Service API.
  • Developers can create external apps that:
    • Run in many different devices
    • Do not use the Workday Client.
    • Flow through AWS and then through the Workday Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which we use for inbound and outbound web service processing.

What is Workday Orchestrate :

 

This is a powerful, proven, enterprise grade interoperability and integration tool that can be used to create custom integrations as well as unlock new custom integration patterns.

This is based on a brand new highly performant architecture that requires no IDE to download and create Orchestrations. Simply log in to the Workday Developer Site and start building. This is designed to be a highly productive, lower-code experience, with drag and drop nodes for rapid development and fast iterations.

Author: Abhishek Narayan Gupta

Workday Consultant

i8CLOUD

Workday: Talent and Performance  

by

What is Talent and Performance in workday?

Workday Talent & Performance is a key feature that simplifies talent management within the Workday platform. It allows organizations to assess employee skills and capacities to ensure they have the right people for current and future business needs. This assessment involves analyzing employee goals, competencies, and relevant business questions, with input from employees, managers, and additional reviewers and the result is the creation of an Employee Review form accessible at each worker’s profile under performance tab. This form helps to track progress, identify strengths, and set development goals.
Overall, Workday Talent & Performance helps companies align their talent strategies with their business goals effectively.

The four key points of Workday Talent to pay attention to:

  • Competencies
  • Talent Reviews
  • Calibration
  • Succession Planning

Competencies

TASK- Configure Competencies

It gives us a clear picture of an employee based on their skills, behaviors and attitude – which are essential for business success. We can easily measure, rate and track competencies with the help of workday tools.
Competencies are organized by competency categories and those categories are organized by competency class.

                                                   Competency Category.                                                                                                                                       

NOTE– Competencies categories and classes are optional.

Proficiency Scale  and Rating Scale –

Proficiency scale and Rating Scale are the measuring scales which helps us to measure the Reviews within workday. The proficiency scales are only applicable to measure the ratings of competencies whereas the Rating scale applies to all other Review section types example – Goals, questions, overall.

Talent Reviews

How to capture Employees SKILLS AND ACCOMPLISHMENT
through Talent Reviews?

Talent Review BP triggers by (start performance review for employee/ organization)  -> HR can push this task -> Notification will send to the employees  .
TASK – Start performance review for employee
Start performance review for organization

It starts with building the template and then defining the Business Process.
TASK – Configure Employee Review Template
While configuring the template only we will be providing the review sections which are competencies, goals, questions, overall.

Note

  • Talent Review Business Process is configurable.
  • Once we use the template for employee review we can’t make changes in the Review Section of template.

After the configuration of talent Review form, it can be initiated for a worker or Group of workers by Start perf review employee/ org task

i8CLOUD

                                                                                                                                     

Calibration

It is used to ensure that performance and potential are continuously assessed properly across the organization

  • It Review all workers ratings.
  • Discuss and adjust those ratings if required.
  • They use the calibrated information to develop a plans that will effectively manage Talent.

NOTE – Performance Review calibration is different form Talent Review Calibration.

Succession Planning

The succession planning help us to identify the workers who can be moved to the key positions or job after the talent review is completed.

Firstly, it Identify the Key Positions by getting:
– What all positions are eligible for Succession?
– Which workers are candidates?

Secondly, it maintain levels of Readiness like
– Ready now
– Ready in 1 year

TASK – Maintain Readiness

Lastly FIND SUCCESSFUL PLANS – Which maintain the list of key positions, for which I like to manage the succession plan.

NOTE:
Before we create the succession plan we need to add the position in the list.
While creating the succession plan we need to identify the candidate.

TASK: – Create succession Plan/ Manage succession Plan
We can see the Succession Plan at Career tab in Worker Profile.

i8CLOUD

                                                                                                                                       

Track your configuration via Workday delivered Report

There are some workday delivered reports which will helps us to monitor the whole process of Talent Review in workday.
Talent Review Status Summary – shows key attributes of talent review Business Process and can help us to monitor the review process.
Employee Review Summary – A report for Managers or Talent admin to analyze the employee reviews.
Employee Review Template eligibility – This report will be helpful for checking the templates eligibility.

Author: Astha Verma
Workday Consultant

Prism Analytics - i8CLOUD

Prism Analytics

by

The first question with Prism is, “Why do we exactly need it with all the other reporting capability Workday provides.”
The primary reason is that Prism gives us the capability to acquire , transform and blend Workday data with external data, publish it as Prism Data Source which can then be used with reporting and discovery boards.
Security: Workday provides four security domains to provide permissions for the Data Catalog. These domains secure access to datasets and not the published Prism data source which is configurable as per requirement.

Below is Prism terminology which we need to make ourselves familiar with:

Process of data acquisition consists of importing data from Workday and external sources to create our Base Data Sets (BDS). These BDS can be transformed. For eg. field types can be changed etc.

Data Acquisition - i8CLOUD

We can then combine these BDS to create Derived Data Sets (DDS). DDS is created by importing a dataset which already exists. Primary pipeline is created from imported dataset and then additional datasets are imported to be blended together. We join Base Data Sets using the primary key(eg. Employee ID).

We can transform base datasets by adding transformation stages or adding Prism Calculated Fields.
Transformation Stages Include:
  • Manage Fields
  • Filter
  • Join
  • Union
  • Group By
We create Prism Calculated Fields using Prism Functions. There is a function library available to write the expressions for Prism Calculated Fields.
Common functions are for example TRIM, TO_DATE, SUBSTRING, LENGTH etc. which are similar to Workday calculated fields.
Once all transformations are complete, we can Publish the data source and build reports on the newly published data source or create Discovery Boards.

Discovery Boards:
Discovery Boards are used for visualization where you can configure multiple viz to give a visual representation of data.Watch a webinar by Workday here as a use case: Link

Data Lineage:

In case of multiple datasets due to transformations and blending, data lineage gives a nice visual representation of how the datasets connect to the overall workflow.

** Image for representation ONLY. Actual Data Lineage view is different.

i8CLOUD: Your Latest Odoo Partner

by

i8CLOUD has officially joined the ranks of Odoo official partners! This exciting development marks our foray into a new line of business focusing on offering robust business applications powered by Odoo. This strategic investment is driven by our desire to diversify our offerings and provide our valued customers with even more comprehensive solutions.

Through this partnership, i8CLOUD will focus on delivering Odoo’s full suite of business applications within the US market. Odoo offers a powerful and integrated platform covering a wide range of needs, including CRM, ERP, e-commerce, accounting, and more. This comprehensive suite empowers businesses to streamline operations, improve efficiency, and gain invaluable insights into their performance.

While we’re enthusiastic about our new venture into the world of Odoo, we want to assure our existing clients that Workday still remains our primary focus. We have onboarded multiple enterprises this year and have a healthy pipeline for 2024. We’re committed to continuing our dedication and expertise in all things Workday, and we’re actively expanding and hiring for Workday-related projects.

We believe that this strategic partnership with Odoo complements our existing Workday expertise and allows us to offer an even broader range of solutions to our clients. We’re confident that both Workday and Odoo will play a crucial role in helping businesses achieve their unique goals and objectives.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates as we continue to grow and expand our offerings. We’re committed to providing our clients with the best possible solutions and services, and we’re confident that our partnership with Odoo will allow us to achieve even greater success.


Duplicate Management Framework

Duplicate Management Framework

by

Workday provides us with the functionalities to identify potential duplicate records, this could include duplicate employee profiles, names, emails or other data entries.

With the help of this functionality we can easily identify duplicate records, with that we have certain sets of  match rules that helps us to merge all those records as per our need.

Here are the Set of steps if you want to access it in the tenant:

1-      Opt-in to duplicate management task:

This will provide you the access of Duplicate management functionalities.

Reminder: If you opt-in then you won’t be able to opt-out in the tenant.

Duplicate Management Framework
2- Manage Match rule task:

This will provide you with the set of match rule criteria or we can say the filter options to access duplicate records.

Duplicate Management Framework
3- Manage duplicate records

This report will help you to find set of records which are present in the tenant.
You can: 
i- Merge the duplicate records.
ii- Remove the duplicate records.

There you will find these sets of filter conditions to apply on the records to see the duplicate records precisely.

Duplicate Management Framework

4- Wanted to unmerge the records if it is already merged or merged by mistake, then go with “Manage candidate” report to unmerge.


Author: Astha Verma

Technology Analyst

Streamlining Employee BIRT PDF Generation with Automation

by

Are you tired of manually generating BIRT PDFs for every employee in your organization? But worry no more! We’ve recently tackled a similar challenge and have an elegant solution for you.

The Challenge:

Our client faced the challenge of efficiently producing BIRT PDFs for all their employees. They were spending valuable time running reports for each employee individually and generating these documents manually. This manual process was time-consuming, making it necessary to find a more efficient solution for generating BIRT PDFs.

The Solution:

We decided to take a more streamlined approach to solve this problem. We have created a dedicated studio for this task, which could extract the necessary information from a custom report. Instead of the client manually gathering data for each employee, we automated the process using the Employee’s unique Work ID (WID).

 

Here’s how it works:

After creating a custom report and a report design file in a Studio Assembly Project integration, add these assembly

 components:

  1. Workday In transport component Start Here.
    • Create a report-service in the Services tab. Specify the report Alias, Description, and Report Reference.

2. WorkdayOutRest, which retrieves the report.

    • In the Properties view, use Select Report Alias to select the alias that you created in step 1.
    • Note: If your report requires parameters, modify the xpath to include the parameters.

3. Extracting data from a report, removing namespaces, and splitting the report to retrieve WIDs one by one can be

 achieved through a series of steps. Here’s a general outline of how you might approach this task:

4. Use an async-mediation component containing 2 write steps to create the report data and report design variables needed in the PdfPrintStep.

5. A PdfPrintStep component that you’ll configure with several parameters, enabling it to generate a PDF using the Report Design.

6. Use an async-mediation component with a store step to store the resulting pdf file.

The resulting BIRT report design will look something like this. Ensure that the components are connected properly.

 

 

 

Author: Abhishek Narayan Gupta

Technology Analyast