WORKDAY HCM FUNCTIONAL 'N' INTEGRATION- Joy Joshi

Workday HCM: Workday is a cloud-primarily based software program vendor that makes a specialty of human capital management and monetary management applications. I can be reached at joyjoshi@gmail.com for any kind of WORKDAY queries. All freshers' and aspirants who want to get into WORKDAY can connect if you have any queries. Kindly leave your comments on how this blog has helped you. Joylee Ponkumati- PMP, PRINCE2, SAP HCM,PSM ,SAFe - Certified

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

WORKDAY INTEGRATION

In Workday, Integration is a major part. We need to be 'Agile' to execute demands of the customer. Customer would like to see how the reports get generated as per their needs.

WD has come up with a solution to reach the demands of customer in the form of reports and calculated field.

Calculated field:

Calculated fields allow users to perform simple arithmetic, date calculations, text concatenation, logical expressions, retrieval of related data, and transformations of their existing data. You can use calculated fields in reporting, business processes, integrations, scheduling recurring processes, and other areas within Workday.

To generate reports as per the customer specification, WD has come with XSLT.

Whenever Workday integration takes place,it generates a report in the form of XML. The output would be in Workday format.

XML was designed to transport and store data (EXtensible Markup Language).

XML was designed to transport and store data, with the focus on what data is and it is the most common tool for data transmissions between all sorts of applications.

An Example XML Document

XML documents use a self-describing and simple syntax:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<note>
<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

The first line is the XML declaration. It defines the XML version (1.0).

The next line describes the root element of the document (like saying: "this document is a note"):

<note>

The next 4 lines describe 4 child elements of the root (to, from, heading, and body):

<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>

And finally the last line defines the end of the root element:

</note>

You can assume, from this example, that the XML document contains a note to Tove from Jani

EIB & Custom XSLT & Workday Web Services (WWS)

There are times when Workday does not present output in the desired format for simple integration tasks. One example is upper-case and lower-case letter. Workday stores people’s names in mixed-case, but another system might require the last name appear as all upper-case letters. Another example might be Social Security Number. SSN is typically formatted as a 9 digit numeric value (if unmasked). Another system could require that the data be passed but, only the last 4 digits. In this case an Extensible Scripting Language Transformation (XSLT) could be implemented with the EIB.

Formatting: If Workday data comes out of the system and is incompatible with the external system, XSLT can be used to transform the data. Some common examples are date fields – Many external systems require a different date format from Workday. XSLT can be used to reformat the data to suit the endpoint’s needs.

Conditional Logic: The standard EIB transformations do not allow for conditional logic. There are times when the output format should be different based upon the value of a particular data element. An example might be a contingent worker vs. a full time employee. Using if/then logic, the output can be tailored to which type of worker the XSLT is attempting to transform.

Custom Output: Finally,an integration can be scheduled to process based on the scheduling criteria that is defined by the user and the passage of time (for example – the first day of each month). The benefit is that the integration does not need to be manually launched each time. Another example would be to launch a benefit carrier integration each Friday at 6pm.

Custom XSLT is Implemented in the Configure Integration System step. Remember the Steps to Implementing an EIB system:

Create Integration System
Configure Integration System
Launch Integration System
View Process Monitor Event

When you Configure the Integration System you can create a new XSLT Attachment Transformation. Here you upload your XSL or XSLT file into the EIB Configuration Task. It will then use it to execute the transformation.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Reports...!

WORKDAY STANDARD REPORTS

Before introducing Workday's Report Writer and creating custom reports, it is a good idea to first discuss the Standard Reports that are delivered in Workday.

As of the writing of this guide there are more than 1000 delivered Standard Reports in two distinct ̳flavors‘ or types. The first type is a XpressO report. These reports are NOT able to be copied and then customized but can generally be configured based on the restrictions of the report format. Good examples of a XpressO report are the audit reports delivered for the payroll audit.

The second type of delivered report is a Report Writer report. Reports are accessible by searching for Workday Standard reports and then further defining your search by category or multi-category.

BUSINESS OBJECTS AND DATA SOURCES

Workday stores your data as business objects- organizations, workers, positions, and so on- which can be thought of as database tables or worksheets in Excel. Just as a database table or worksheet has columns and rows, a Workday business object has fields and instances. A business object is composed of a set of related fields, similar to how a table or spreadsheet is composed of a set of related columns. Instances of a business object in Workday are like rows in a table or spreadsheet, with each instance representing a unique occurrence of that type of object such as an organization or worker. A business object can have no instances, one instance, or many instances. Workday automatically links related business objects together.

The first and most important step in developing a custom report is choosing a Data Source. Data sources are defined and delivered by Workday. A data source has a primary business object. Workday delivers different data sources for the key primary business objects. The same primary business object may be represented by more than one data source depending on filtering and roles required. Each data source associated with a primary business object has its own security.

The access defined for a data source controls whether a user can create or run a custom report based on that data source. Different data sources for a single primary business object may be delivered by Workday to allow reporting on different sets of instances, depending on the security access of the user. Only data sources that are authorized for security groups to which you are assigned are displayed in the prompt list. You should not select data sources in the ―Do Not Use category.

Each custom report has exactly 1 Data Source. Each Data Source has exactly 1 Primary Business Object. The Primary Business Object is important because it dictates the list of Related Business Objects that are available to include in that report. The Related Business Objects have a 1:1 or 1:M relationship to the Primary Business Object. Since many reports and integrations focus on Workers (a superset of Employees and Contingent Workers), we will focus on the Worker business object Data Sources.

There are two types of data sources--- Standard and Indexed.Within standard data sources you will find that many data sources all reference the same business object.For example, there are about 35 data sources that all reference worker/employee. Indexed Data Sources have filters that allow us to have one data source for a business object. Multiple filters can then be associated with that business object. Only Indexed data sources can have filters.

A data source can be designed to return all instances of the primary business object (All Workers), or it can have built-in filtering logic defined by Workday. If it has built-in filtering, the filter comparison value(s) can either be built into the data source (All Active Employees) or designed so the user is prompted for the comparison value when running the report (Employees by Organization, which always prompts the user for an Organization).

For Reports pertaining to a Worker that focus on a Worker‘s current data or their data in a point in time:

WORKER (Primary Business Object) o ALL WORKERS

ALL ACTIVE AND TERMINATED WORKERS (applies effective dated behavior)  EMPLOYEE (Primary Business Object)

ALL ACTIVE EMPLOYEES (will not contain contingent Workers) --- CONTINGENT WORKER

ALL CONTINGENT WORKERS

Every Data Source has a Primary Business Object. The result is that when you report against a particular Data Source the output will yield 1 instance (row) for every instance of the Primary Business Object.

Example: The ALL ACTIVE EMPLOYEES Data Source will yield one instance of data for every employee that is active. The number of instances could be reduced by adding a filter to the report definition.

The Standard Report called Data Sources lists all data sources grouped by their primary business object. This report is a valuable resource when you are determining which data source to use in your report. It gives a description of each data source, lists built-in prompts and as well as which security groups have access to it.

Steps to Create a Custom Report :
Access the Create Custom Report.

Enter a unique Report Name

 Select the Advanced Report Type we are giving example of an advanced report as in
most of the cases, we build advanced reports
 Select a Data Source
 Select the Temporary Report option if you want the report to be deleted automatically after 7 days.
 Click OK to confirm your selections and continue to the report definition.
 Define Columns for Advanced Report – In this section, we have to select all the fields which should be included in the report.
 Define Sort Options for Advanced Report – This is used to sort data. Example we can sort the data alphabetically so that when we run the report, we can see the sorted data.
 Define Filters- Filters are very important to a custom report. We can filter data based on fields present on the primary business object.
 Define Sub Filters- Sub filters are defined when we want to filter based on a field on related business object.
 Define Prompt fields under Prompt Tab.
 Define Output options like Table. Chart etc.
 Define sharing options.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Business Process

It is a sequence of one or more steps that accomplishes a business objective.
Workday provides optimized business processes which can be used as a starting point for configuring processes according to one’s needs. The definitions provided by Workday will have Default Definition in bracket (Highlighted in red). The one which is configured for the supervisory org will appear like BP Name for Sup Org name (Highlighted in blue).

All the subordinates will follow it’s superior’s business process definitions if not configured separately.

BP determines who approves or denies something that happened, who needs to do additional tasks, who needs to be notified and what events needs to be initiated.

Business Process can be copied from Supervisory Org actions using path SO-- Business Process---Create, Copy or link definitions

Also, BP can be copied from Business Process Actions. E.g.

- Edit Definition option is used to edit the existing definition of BP.
- Add Notification option is used for setting up the notifications for Business Process.
- View diagram option will display the BP definition as Visio diagram.

BP columns – step, order, If, type, specify, optional, group, All, Run as, Due date, Due date is based on effective date, Complete.

Order will specify the order of the step. The same alphabet mentioned against the step signifies that both of them can be executed in parallel. Dictionary order is followed for determining which step will be executed first. So, aa will be executed before ab.
If specifies the condition which should be satisfied for the execution of the step. The condition can be added by going to the Step Actions---Maintain Step Conditions

Condition within BP will determine whether the step will be executed or not.
Type will specify the type of BP step – Initiation, Approval, Action, Approval Chain,
Batch, Checklist, Consolidated Approval, Integration, Report, Service, To do

Specify will specify the type of step e.g. If Action-What action?

Group specifies the group of people who are responsible for the step.
BP is created using the combination of various type of steps e.g. actions, approvals, To
do, checklists etc.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Organization types in Workday !

Organizations enable you to group together resources, workers, costs, and other organizations for business process routing, security, analytical, and reporting purposes.
Generally, organizations have members and roles that support a specific business function. Workday delivers a number of different organization types for different functional purposes that are independent from one another.
For example, your supervisory organization reflects the reporting structure, and this may be completely different from your costing structure for which cost centers and regions are used.

Organization type:

Company:The primary organization type used by Workday Financial Management. All financial transactions are for a company, and most financial reports are run in the context of a company, such as balance sheets and income statements.

Note: Workday recommends that you create a separate company for each internal entity with a separate tax ID.

Cost Center: Used to track financial transactions and HCM transactions with a financial impact, such as hiring or terminations. Employees and contingent workers are assigned to a cost center when hired. You can roll up cost centers into cost center hierarchies, which can only store cost centers for reporting purposes. You cannot associate transactions with a cost center hierarchy.

Location: Locations are an attribute associated with a worker in a position, and can also be used for assets. Locations reflect a worker's work location rather than an area of responsibility. Locations can be structured as a hierarchy whereby Location A can be the superior of Location B. Location hierarchies have organizational roles and can include locations for grouping purposes. Location hierarchies can also be structured as a hierarchy whereby Location Hierarchy X can be the superior of Location Hierarchy Y.

Create Location is used for creating a location. Location should be created before creating Supervisory organization.

Region: Reflects the area of responsibility for a worker instead of the work location. For example, a sales person might work from a Miami location, which rolls up to North America, but might be responsible for sales to the Latin American region.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Business Object

Business Objects

Workday stores your data as business objects—organizations, workers, positions, and so on—which can be thought of as database tables or worksheets in Excel. Just as a database table or worksheet has columns and rows, a Workday business object

has fields and instances.

A business object is composed of a set of related fields, similar to how a table or

spreadsheet is composed of a set of related columns.

Instances of a business object in Workday are like rows in a table or spreadsheet, with each instance representing a unique occurrence of that type of object such as an organization or

worker.

A business object can have no instances, one instance, or many instances.

Workday automatically links related business objects together. For example, purchase
order lines are linked to a purchase order header, the purchase order header is linked to a
supplier, the supplier is linked to a company, and so on.

Business Object Details can be found out by searching bo: business object name and then
navigating to the same.

Business object details can be seen with the help of workday delivered standard report i.e. Business Object Details Report which takes business object name as input.

There will be 4 tabs on the Business Objects Details page:

a) Fields---List of all fields which are part of a business object will be shown.

b) Related Business Objects--- List of all business objects which are directly or indirectly
related to a business object will be shown.

c) Data Sources – List of data sources of which the business object will be a part will be
shown.

d) Reports – List of reports which uses the current business object will be shown.

The Power of Objects: When you see something in Workday, you can perform an action on it.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Core Concepts of Workday...

Supervisory Organizations: The foundation of Workday HCM. This type of organization groups workers into a management hierarchy.

Ex:An organization for a group of Workers that report directly to one Manager.

Department;7554xxxx,ABC Company!

Staffind Models: They define how jobs and positions are created and filled in a supervisory organization.

Job Profiles: They are generic features and characteristics of a job and of a position that is built off that profile.

Ex.: An employer creates a job profile for many reasons. On the organizational side, the employer must analyze the job that a person will perform, including essential duties, which are performed often, and nonessential duties. These duties will be used to calculate the amount of pay, the job title, the salary or hourly designation and the position on the organizational chart. Managers assist the HR department with updating job profiles when positions must be advertised and filled. Each duty is written as a statement of what outputs a candidate must produce.

Job Family: Abroad grouping of jobs that perform similar functions. Ex:Job families include information services, nursing,library/museum,services, accounting/finance.

Compensation: The umbrella term for compensation packages,grades,grade profiles and plans.

Compensation Plan:A component of pay that you use to assign monetary amounts to a worker’s pay.
Compensation Package :A grouping of compensation guidelines and Compensation Plans that comprise all of the elements of Worker compensation. Ex:All Workers are assigned the ABC Company Compensation Package.
Compensation Grade/Profile: Compensation Grade is assigned to a job profile based on the level of responsibilities performed by an incumbent of the job profile. Pay ranges are defined in compensation grade profile.

Security: A security group is a collection of users or a collection of objects that are related to users. Allowing a security group access to a securable item in a security policy grants access to the users associated with the security group.

Business process: A series of activities when linked together achieve a desired business objective.Activities include tasks, To Do’s, approvals and upload of documents.Business Process Conditional Rule - A condition that defines routing of a business process.

The above stated are the core concepts of Workday...

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Friday, July 4, 2014

Introducing Workday Recruiting

Thursday, July 3, 2014

WORKDAY HCM

Most of the SAP HCM and HR consultants are shifting to Workday HCM side and I got curious to know what is it all about. Coming from SAP HCM and PMP certification backdrop, my thirst to learn new module increased and I started mining on Workday and here I come with my findings:

Workday uses powerful object action model that drives workday navigation.

My online diary of my experience learning Workday HCM. Questions or ideas for posts? I can be reached at: joyjoshi@gmail.com. If this blog has helped you at all.

Aneel Bhusri

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Aneel Bhusri is co-founder and chief executive officer at Workday. He is also a member of the company’s board of directors. Aneel has been a leader, product visionary and innovator in the enterprise IT industry for more than 20 years. Before co-founding Workday in 2005, Aneel held a number of leadership positions at PeopleSoft, including senior vice president responsible for product strategy, business development and marketing, and vice chairman of the board. He has served as an investing partner at Greylock Partners and as chairman of the board at Data Domain (acquired by EMC for $2.5 B in 2009).

In addition to his role at Workday, Aneel currently serves on the boards several private companies including, Cloudera, Okta, Tipping Point and Pure Storage.

Aneel received an MBA from Stanford University and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, both from Brown University. Aneel is a Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

WORKDAY FEATURES:

Workday is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application Hosted by WorkdayAccessed via the web Common, non-customizable software. Best practices Works on a 3x per year release strategy. New releases available in production in March, July, and November each year Workday application is cloud-based Broad integration requirements

CUSTOMER NOTE ON WORKDAY:

By replacing 80 systems with Workday, Flextronics experienced a 30% reduction in total cost of ownership.

– Mike McNamara, CEO, Flextronics

GLOBALLY IT HAS TO MAKE IT PRESENCE: It will become more global over time.
It’s not yet a ‘global’ application. Yes, I realize WD has been implemented in countries around the world. However, in some cases it seems like we’re missing some things. For example, company cars are frequently a benefit in Europe, and one’s HR system often tracks them. PeopleSoft has a few pages to this point–the car is set up, it’s applied to an individual. An individual is attached to a car plan for eligibility. It all ties together at the end of the day and enables you to have the basis of the data required by the UK government P11D reporting. When we asked WD about this, 1) they didn’t understand the requirement 2) they have no car pages, the best you can do is set up a car under the company property pages (where you won’t have the required data fields that you need, such as c02 emissions) 3) no such report is pre-existing in WD (according to the WD supplied resource doing the demo). So now we’ll be stuck, having to make an access database, or something else on the side, to support the business requirement.

Workday Home Page

Navigation through Workday is made simple through the use of powerful search capabilities and multiple navigation tools. All tasks and reports are secured and access requires you to be in the appropriate security group. If we cannot set a task, report, it is because we do not have permissions to access it. Security is configurable.

A European solution example in Workday

As a global company, we have offices and employees in almost every country in the world.

Much of our North American Workday implementation was based upon US requirements, with a handful of Mexico and Canada business needs sprinkled in. This design, configuration and use became 'the global footprint'.

Now that we're looking at European countries as part of our next wave of implementation, in general the current use is getting challenged. In addition, the design is getting extended for business requirements that did not exist in the US, e.g. contract data.

What is European contract data?

First, I'm not talking about contractors. :) In Europe, most countries have the concept of employment contracts, so prior to accepting an employment offer, the contract provides a contract offer to the candidate (i.e. future employee), and the candidate may choose to sign 'as is' or negotiate some of the contract clauses. Then both the candidate and a company representative sign the contract to make it official. Each country will usually have different things that they put into their contracts, depending on local business practice. There is no 'Euopean contract'.

If you get a big promotion such as from non-manager to manager or to a high position, you may get a new contract. Otherwise, for smaller promotions, your contract would just get an addendum with any new details.

What kind of data is in a European contract?

Often, you'll have some general and overarching principles that apply to all employees, such as an ethics policy or general details about working conditions.

A contract will often hold basic data, such as the employee's name, home address, and job data such as title/position, the title/position that the role reports into, weekly hours, pay frequency, pay rate, hire date, seniority date (if differing for benefits calculations), notice period, probation date, etc.

As well, you'll find some 'eligibility' items

if a company provides a contribution to a pension on the employee's behalf, what is the percent
if a company car is provided, what is the level/budget or allowance in lieu of car
holiday entitlement
private medical scheme, if offered
what sort of sick pay you are entitled to
etc.

What is the Workday functionality?

Workday gives us a page for contract data, it looks like this:

Workday has the usual 'per country' configuration, so that you can set up your Contract Types per country, which is helpful.
The attachments and comments feature is also there, so that is useful if we want to attach a copy of the contract.

Some of the job-related data found in the contract will be on the 'regular' Workday job pages. Other data such as pension or health, we can try to store on the benefits screens. However...

Where we're challenged in Europe, trying to use Workday

There's a lot of great fields on this page, which we would definitely use. But we're struggling to figure out where to put the rest of the contract data. It's like we were invited to dinner and only served the appetizer. My current thought is that this page was designed without European input. Mexico does have more of a concept of contracts, so maybe that was the driver, who knows.

Here are some areas that are providing heartburn at the moment. And specifically, our payroll systems in the countries do have the concept of contract data, and would like to receive it on an interface from Workday. Our HR people as well would like to be able to store and view this data. So where are the disconnects?

1. Notice period

This particularly pains me, as it's such a basic concept that any European based HR system would contain. A notice period is included in your employment contract. The higher your position, the longer it is likely to be. None of this '2 weeks notice' in Europe!Notice period in the UK and Germany will be for 3 months. High level executives may have 6 months or a year even.

This applies to both the employer and the employee, and may differ, although if we could just get the employee one, that would be great.

Notice periods are often a 'date in words', for example: 3 months, 6 weeks, etc. There is an added complexity to some, such as 1 month to the end of the quarter. I've heard some other companies try to simplify and specify a number of day or weeks.

In addition, local labor law may specify a minimum statutory period, but as a company you may wish to put a longer notice period into place.

Workday has no functionality in this area!

There is a Workday Brainstorm (Workday's mechanism to make change requests to the application) from other companies to at least get a 'notice date' added.

2. Dual contracts

This comes up in various EU countries, in particular where we have better benefits than our NA counterparts. :) Often, an employee has a regular contract, and as a part of that may receive maternity benefits from either/both the company and/or government, depending on the country.

The employee on maternity may receive their regular benefits, but may want to work part time during maternity leave. Usually in this case, the company will need to make a new contract with the relevant employment information.

Workday only allows for one active contract at a time!

Again, there's a Brainstorm to get this changed, or at least configurable to allow for two simultaneous contracts.

A workaround is to use Workday's 'multiple jobs' functionality. If you put the employee into two distinct positions, the employee may have two active contracts at the same time. However, that's a lot of work to enable, both from a functional and technical side, just to get some minimal contract data into place on a 2nd contract.

3. Contract renewal

In Europe, for better or for worse, it's more difficult to terminate an employee. Often, we hire people on in temporary contracts. Depending on the country, you are allowed to extend the contract a certain number of times, but after extension number x, it automatically converts the emp into a 'regular' contract (with all corresponding rights).

Workday missed to include this functionality!

Workday workaround: Use the freeform 'Contract ID' field and get the data input folks to consistently put in '0001' for 1st contract, '0002' for 2nd contract, etc. I don't like using freeform fields in this manner, as you end up doing extra auditing as people forget the 0's or make it length 5.

There's a Brainstrorm for this one too.

I could continue on here with my online gap analysis, but I think you get the idea.

Why is this especially irritating?

PeopleSoft has a lot more functionality! Granted, we probably only using 10% of the fields on the pages, but they met our needs. In my 'notice period' example above, we set up a contract clause for each notice period, such as the 'non competing' clause listed below. As each employee has a contract, you then choose the relevant notice period clause for that employee.

In Summary

We're continuing to review the data against what our payroll systems need to receive. As the contract data pages are not very robust in Workday, we'll be left having to 'MacGyver' it in, or not store it at all.

In discussions with our Workday certified consulting partner, the only thing they can tell us to do is: either don't store the data in Workday, or make custom objects, custom IDs etc. to accommodate it, recognizing that you don't have enough custom objects free to meet the needs. As well, it would just be generally ugly from a data entry and reporting perspective, as well as not in harmony in one place, with some fields on the contract data pages and others independently as custom objects etc.

We currently have a workable solution in PeopleSoft, and in going to Workday it's seen by the users a going backwards as Workday does not come to the table with a real solution here.