Legacy systems and outdated workforce technology offer a rigid, on-premise approach to enterprise and integration architecture that can’t keep up with the rapidly changing technological landscape of today.

Because of the increased need for interoperability between applications, support for complex integrations, and connectivity between business processes and resources, an agile integration technology system that is easy to adapt and evolve over time is necessary.

The Workday platform understands this and has created the Workday Integration Cloud to make integration events easier to manage and maintain in the long run.

Read on to learn how Workday Integration Tools can help optimize your business operations…

What is Workday Integration?

Workday provides a single-architecture interface and a fully integrated suite of applications to help users combine their core human resources, finance, and data analytics functions into one system.

Workday Integration capabilities enable users to manage data more efficiently, maintain data security and compliance with regulatory guidelines, and gain real-time, actionable insights into their most important operations. All Workday Integration solutions are also created on a platform as a Service (PaaS), allowing users to seamlessly merge their SaaS and cloud systems.

Understanding the Value of Workday Integration

The Workday Integration Cloud was built to make your life easier.

Between its pre-built functionality in the core Workday platform and its availability to all users, regardless of how long you’ve been live or how many applications you use, the Workday Integration platform is made to simplify system integration. Workday Integration tools put in the work so you don’t have to.

Workday’s commitment to interoperability and ease of connectivity between systems and applications not only makes your life easier now but also sets you up for future success by providing everything you need to keep up with change in the industry and adapt your integrated enterprise systems over time.

Main Features of Workday Integration Architecture

Workday Integration architecture was made to help seamlessly connect your business systems and manage complicated integrations to and from your Workday system, all without the use of confusing middleware tools. Workday Integration tools operate as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) for integration and are powered by an enterprise service bus (ESB) that is embedded in the heart of the system.

A few main objects outline Workday’s integration architecture:

  • Workday data sources
  • Business objects (primary, secondary, etc.)
  • Available data fields and object instances

Workday’s packaged integrations also offer a few key tools that help accelerate and optimize the development of your integrations: Cloud Connect, EIBs, Workday Studio, Workday APIs, and more.

Does Workday Have a REST API?

Workday offers two main integration formats for web-service-based APIs, including REST and SOAP, that help improve and enhance interoperability between Workday and other systems. A REST API (also known as a RESTful API) is an application programming interface that helps to facilitate the secure exchange of information between two computer systems.

REST APIs follow reliable, secure software communication standards to ensure your data is managed safely and securely both within each system and in transit between the two. With the REST API, Workday users can improve their system’s scalability, functionality, and flexibility and further enhance integration with internal and external systems.

Key Workday Integration Tools

The Workday platform knows that simplifying systems integration in a world full of constantly changing enterprise applications and data sources can be a hassle, so it created a few key integration tools that help speed up your integration process and keep your business systems optimized.

Let’s take a closer look at each tool…

Workday Integration Cloud Connect

Within its Integration platform, Workday offers many different packaged core connectors, including ones that are pre-built into the system and those that can be configurable if needed later on down the road. These cloud connectors are built into the Workday platform from the start, easily maintained to meet your current and future needs, and fully supported by Workday and its partners.

Workday Integration Cloud Connect Highlights:

  • No additional integration strategies that require you to manage on-premise or in the cloud
  • Access to a library of pre-built integrations 
  • Reduced time needed to build custom integrations by using pre-built tools designed for Workday
  • The ability for non-technical users to create integrations with technical support

Workday connectors have complex configuration capabilities, making it simpler for your organization to adapt your integration plans quickly and efficiently, especially when dealing with a complicated third-party integration tool or a lack of resources to maintain an entirely different integration infrastructure. These connectors and their key capabilities are also updated and maintained to keep up with changes in the other core Workday applications, making your system more optimized through one complete integration platform.

Enterprise Interface Builder

The Workday Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) removes complex coding requirements from your Workday platform integrations. This way, non-technical users and their IT counterparts can all operate the system and meet their integration needs without the extra training, expertise, and headaches of modern middleware technology.

EIB Highlights:

  • Designed for non-technical users—no programming required 
  • Used within the Workday application interface
  • Export data out of Workday once or on a scheduled cadence 
  • Perform and maintain bulk files and tasks

Like the other integration tools, Workday EIBs are built into the Workday software and are accessible through the Workday user interface (UI). EIBs allow you to create internal and external integrations using their pre-built graphical interface. EIBs are especially useful when managing large amounts of data in one place, loading it into your Workday and non-Workday systems, and extracting it to be transferred elsewhere in the cloud.

Workday Studio

Workday Studio allows users to build, manage, and deploy more complex integrations by offering a graphical design environment with more functional areas. Because of its increased capabilities, features, and included elements of graphical design, Workday Studio is able to handle more complex and custom integrations to meet all your needs in a single system.

Workday Studio Highlights:

  • Designed for technical users who need highly customizable integrations to and from Workday apps
  • Functionally rich graphical development environment
  • Efficient process of large data sets up to tens of gigabytes
  • Advanced message processing capabilities
  • Customizable with Spring, Java, or other third-party services

Workday Studio also provides a “drag and drop” feature for users that makes routine integration processes that contain reusable parts more effective. This, paired with a unified data center and complete enablement features, makes managing complex Workday Integration solutions seem like a piece of cake.

Workday APIs

Workday is based on a standard application programming interface (API) that gives users full access to business programs, processes, and operations. The Workday API format allows for interoperability between different technical languages, systems, and sources of middleware technology.

These APIs are also built to keep up with updates within the Workday system, ensuring your integrations will continue to operate properly even when Workday releases new applications or system updates. Workday APIs contain a few different internal services to help maintain your web services and optimize your business functions:

  • Monitoring services
  • Reporting services (also known as Reporting as a Service or RaaS)
  • Business services
  • Outbound messaging services

Whether you need a more defined method of extracting data from your Workday system, additional integration functionality, the ability to track business events and objects, or anything in between, Workday Integration API and its service categories (i.e., Workday Recruiting API, Workday HCM API, Workday Learning API, and more) have what it takes to get the job done.

Workday AWS Integration

Workday AWS integration is made simple with the AWS Glue Connector tool. This key integration tool allows users to seamlessly connect AWS Glue jobs to extract and load necessary data from the Workday system.

This Workday AWS integration tool gives users more reliable, real-time connectivity between the two systems and provides comprehensive access to Workday data and metadata, further improving the interoperability between AWS and Workday interfaces. Workday also plans to support various AWS AI services internally in Workday Extend to allow Workday developers to create Workday Extend apps with more capabilities generated from using these hyperscale technologies.

The AWS Glue Connector provides more functional cryptography capabilities (i.e., TLS 1.2, ECC, etc.) to improve the security controls of key system integrations, facilitates cloud ETL reporting processes for better operational reports, improves efficiency for backup and data recovery processes, and enhances overall data governance.

Workday Query Language

Workday Query Language (WQL) is a powerful tool that offers higher-performing Workday data querying capabilities for your company. Workday WQL can be selected as a mode of retrieval within your system, and it allows users to query data in existing tables to provide greater visibility and improve overall decision-making processes throughout your organization.

With Workday Query Language functionality, users are given the ability to outline an intuitive syntax that makes querying data in Workday more accurate, relevant, and efficient for your team. This way, users can leverage WQL to get important data from their Workday system without writing or running complex reports.

Added Functionality with Workday Integrations

Because integration tools are part of the complete Workday system, they offer many capabilities that other technologies can’t – with no middleware or added costs. Here are a few of the key capabilities of the Workday Integration tools:

  • Comprehensive system integrations
  • Increased data and information security
  • Included Workday APIs
  • Complex managing and monitoring functionality
  • Multiple toolkit solutions
  • Custom system development

The added functionality provided by Workday’s integration capabilities speeds up your integration deployment process, focuses on your technology’s functional areas, and makes building integrations easier for you and your team efficiently.

Benefits of Integration with Workday for Business Users

By using Workday Integration tools, users are able to manage and monitor their integrations more effectively within the native Workday UI, regardless of the integration type or complexity. The unified Workday system and its configurable integration tools deliver quite a few benefits to technical and non-technical users alike.

Cloud-Based System

Workday sets itself apart from outdated legacy systems by offering a completely cloud-based system for users. By keeping all of its capabilities and functionalities within the native Workday UI, integrations can be seamlessly enabled and deployed throughout your single cloud system.

Workday allows integrations to be made between core internal systems, like Human Capital Management (HCM) and Finance, and external applications, systems, and data sources. This makes connection to and interoperability with other applications and systems simpler and easier for users to build and maintain.

Simple Deployment Process

Because of Workday’s simplified integration cloud platform and elimination of middleware technology, managing integrations and Workday business processes is easier and more efficient. The Workday Integration Cloud uses consistent technology to help streamline your integration deployment process, no matter which integrations you’re using or how complex they may be. Workday provides multiple diverse integration options and complexities for users to ensure your system meets your needs.

Consistent Data Security

Workday’s integration tools are built and configured into the complete Workday system, meaning that they are able to balance high-security standards included in the security model that spans all Workday modules, applications, and interfaces. This way, you can rest easy knowing your data is safe and secure, even when managing and monitoring complex integrations within your Workday system and beyond.

Common Workday Integration Challenges

Integrating Workday into your current IT environment can require a major time, resources, and money investment.

One trend we’ve seen in the integration space is businesses using point-to-point solutions to connect and synchronize data between Workday and other systems, services, data sources, and APIs. Point-to-point connections are perfect until you need to make changes that require an experienced developer, slowing down the process and leaving connections vulnerable to breakage across the chain.

Let’s dive a little deeper into two of the most common integration issues…

1) Not Enough Time for Testing

One bad practice we’ve seen customers repeatedly adopt is not planning enough time for testing. You’ll pay for this shortcut when the integration goes live in production, and all those mistakes start causing downstream issues with other integrations.

We suggest putting in the hard work at the beginning. Plan for testing all the scenarios that could come into play so you can update the logic and integration to handle those scenarios. This will save you a tremendous amount of time, effort, and headaches.  

2) Not Including Subject Matter Experts 

Our Workday consultants have helped many clients plan and implement Workday integrations, and another common (and significant) challenge they’ve seen is not having all the industry experts involved in the project from the start. 

The subject matter experts within the company are the individuals most knowledgeable about the current process, which makes them vital when it comes to developing the requirements to test the integration and manage their team’s Workday Integration training plan.

Without these people involved in the project, you will only wind up with a weaker product, leading to extra time, money, and other workforce resources down the drain.

Benefits of Third-Party Workday Consultants

Here are a few core advantages of partnering with third-party, client-side Workday consultants to maximize the success of your integration projects…

Managing Resources 

If your organization requires new integrations, setting them up will take a lot of time and resources. Try to put this on your current staff, and they’ll be working overtime to manage their full-time job and the new project, which is a quick way to get burnout, frustration, and potentially increased turnover.

However, bringing in a third-party consultant allows you to effectively manage your staff’s workload, keeping them engaged in the process without spreading your resources too thin.

Varied Experience 

Quality consultants have years of experience working with various clients, which means they bring insights from different companies and industries when they work on your project.

Seeing how other businesses do things means they can offer suggestions on best practices that are proven to work, common mistakes you should avoid, and out-of-the-box solutions to problems you might be too close to see.

Time and Money Savings 

An experienced consultant can save organizations a lot of time. (And we all know time is money.) If you encounter a problem during your project, a consultant has likely seen something similar and can fix it fairly easily. In contrast, your staff could spend hours researching what the problem even is before they can tackle the issue.

Workday Integration Examples

While Workday integrations can cover many different use cases depending on individual, organization, or industry needs, a few common Workday integration examples are continuously leveraged to improve business functionality and enhance the employee experience.

Here are some of the most common Workday Integration use cases:

  • Workday and External HCM Software (i.e., UKG, SAP, Ceridian Dayforce)
  • Workday and Learning Development and Management Tools (i.e., LinkedIn Learning, Google Learning)
  • Workday and Timekeeping Software (i.e., UKG, Oracle HCM Workforce)
  • Workday and Payroll Management Tools (i.e., ADP Workforce, HRSoft)

From managing and optimizing employee processes from hire to retire to accelerating the efficiency of key business management processes, more accurately provisioning assets, and more, Workday integrations make a difference.

Workday’s integration cloud system not only brings important data together in one place and automates it with Workday functionality, but it also helps optimize the full employee experience by providing a more accurate, honest, and reliable feedback loop between employees, managers, and executives.

Getting Started with Us

If working with the Workday Integration Cloud and its toolkits sounds complicated to you, no need to worry!

Surety Systems has a team of senior-level Workday consultants who have combined experience in all modules of Workday, and they’re here to help you find your way through all of Workday’s packaged integrations.

We’ve even included a sample profile of one of our Workday professionals to help you know what to expect when partnering with us…

Senior Surety Workday Integration Tools Consultant

  • 8+ years of experience building Workday integrations
  • Experience with HCM, Benefits, Time Tracking integrations
  • Certified in Workday Integrations Core and Pro
  • Has maintained and built HireRight integrations as well as Fidelity integrations for 401k, ESPP, RSA, HSA, etc., both inbound and outbound
  • Has ACA experience pertaining to vendor integrations with CIC Plus and managing the integration process annually

How Can We Help?

New to the Workday Integration Cloud platform and need help with common Workday Integration challenges organizations often face? Our Workday consultants have you covered!

Interested in how Workday integration solutions could make monitoring your integrations and enterprise cloud applications simpler for your organization? We can help you there too.

Contact us today!