Sunday 26 December 2021

How do you identify which integration to choose when you get a requirement

How do you identify which integration to choose when you get a requirement

What is the approach?

Here is what I think you should consider while choosing the integration system. It hold good for both inbound and outbound.

When you get the requirement, first see if there are any Packaged Connectors (Delivered) for the third party directly with a little tweaks can help achieve the need.

Then if you were not able to find any delivered packaged connectors, try to see if there are any Core Connectors which are template based can help achieve the need of integration.

If you do not find one from above, check if you can do it with a custom report and through Enterprise Interface Builder.

And if any of the above does not show way for your integration needs, then you look out for Workday Studio. This is the final place where you achieve any complex integrations.


Summary:

Packaged connectors            - Delivered by Workday to connect with third party [End-to-End]

Core Connectors                  - Template based.

Enterprise Interface Builder - Custom Report or Web Service

Workday Studio                    - Multiple output files, Read from different sources , Exceptions, Inbound & Outbound in same integration.

Workday EIB Interview Questions

Workday EIB Interview Questions


What is EIB and what are the types of EIB?
EIB - Enterprise interface builder tool which is used to build simple inbound and outbound Integrations to connect workday with external endpoints.
Types:
Inbound
Outbound 

How many steps are involved in creation of an EIB?
3 Steps / Phases
Get Data, Transform, Deliver

What are outbound EIB?
Outbound EIBs are used to export data from workday. We can also send this exported data to any external vendors or legacy systems through different endpoints such as SFTP/FTP etc.
E.g. Send Dependents data to Benefits vendor from workday.

What are Inbound EIB?
Inbound EIB Integration are used to upload data into Workday from external endpoints or from spreadsheets.
E.g. Inserting One Time Payments, Inserting Bonus Data, Update Emergency Contacts 
We can upload data to workday using spreadsheet attachment or external file from SFTP/FTP/EMAIL locations.

What are the main types of Workday Integrations?
Workday Studio Integration, 
Enterprise Information Builder (EIB) Integration, 
Cloud Connect Integration.

How do you choose which tool is best out of three integrations available?
Few things needs to be considered while choosing the integration tool. Here is what you need to identify first in place.
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 (Packaged Connector).

Does this integration just need to export or import some data into Workday? – If yes, then most likely you need to go with EIBs.

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.

Can we create an EIB with the help of matrix report?
No, the reason being reports need to be Web Service enabled for creating EIB and Matrix reports can’t be Web Service enabled.

Can we use all advance reports as a data source in EIB?
 No, we cannot use all advance reports in EIB. We can use only those reports which are web service enabled.

Can we use simple reports as a data source in EIB?
No

What are the types of transformation allowed with EIB?
We can use 3 types of transformation with EIB:

Custom report Transformation -This type is inbuilt transformation of EIB and have limited functionality.
Custom transformation - In this we have to attach XSLT with EIB and supports XSLT functionality. So, this has more features than Custom report Transformation. Learn here w3schools
Document Transformation -This is type of connector that we can connect with EIB and will supports all functionality of Document transformation such as XTT and ETV.

What are the limitations of EIB?
Only one data source can be used. And only one destination point can be configured for one tenant. Can’t define output tag in EIB.

What data sources can we choose while creating the EIB outbound?
EIB outbound is to export the data from Workday.
Data Source - Custom report or Web Services or REST URL

What data sources can we choose while creating the EIB Inbound?
EIB Inbound is to Import the data into Workday.
Data Source - Attachment or External file or REST Endpoint

Name some Web services that you have used for inbound EIB Load?
Request One-Time Payment (OTP)
Change Emergency Contacts
Request Compensation Change
Terminations

While performing EIB Inbound load what should we do to avoid get pending actions / Tasks in inbox?
This represents, when you do a load through EIB the underlying BP/task should get complete without going for any approvals. Because your load may be huge , say 10,000 EE bonus data you are loading at that time, there shouldn't be any workflow triggering for approvals. So, while filling the Inbound Spreadsheet template, we need to select “Automatic processing” on first tab. This will skip the BP's

Where can you view Error messages for an EIB?
You can view the EIB run through Integration Events , Process Monitor

Name some input and output types for EIBs?
Input:   SFTP/FTP, REST, or attachment 
Output: SFTP/FTP, HTTP, Email, CSV, JSON, XML, etc


EIB Integration issues with Scenarios and Resolutions


Scenario 1: The EIB does not display in the integration prompt of the Launch/Schedule Integration task.
Resolution: Verify EIB security Configuration. Edit the EIB and resolve any critical errors.

Scenario 2: Non-legible character appears in Microsoft Excel when you open a CSV output file.
Resolution: Before opening the CSV file in Excel, open the CSV in notepad , Then select File>>save as, UTF-8 encoding.

Scenario 3: File name does not include generated date and time variables when the sequence Generator is configured correctly.
Resolution: When launching or scheduling the EIB, Use these settings with the file name launch parameter.
Value type: Determine value at run time
Value: Next sequence for integration File Utility.

Scenario 4: Workday returns the following error message: Root Cause: BadRequestException: Error code: unknown Response: 500: Processing error occurred. No value provided for required [Prompt Name].
Resolution:  Ensure that all required prompts are being populated when the EIB is launched. You may have to edit the scheduler if the EIB was launched from there.

Scenario 5: Workday returns the following error: Transform failed at component: HandleTransform.request.0.XsltTransform. Reason: Output character not available in this encoding
Resolution: 
Open the XSLT transformation file in a text editor.
Find the element <xsl: output>.
Within that element, search for the setting for encoding=.
Often this is set to ISO-8859-1 Change this value to UTF-8.
If the recipient of the EIB cannot accept UTF-8-encoded files, then you must change the source data in Workday.

When To Use EIB vs Core Connectors

When To Use EIB vs Core Connectors

Integrations: When to use EIB vs Core Connector

The big advantage with Core Connectors is the Change Detection. Which helps in generating the outbound files with the change data / delta data.

Most of the times, the requirement will be to generate the full file for the first time run and later on the change file.

Example: 

Worker demographics data - on Jan 1st 2020. - Send Full File as it is the first time for the vendor. Then here on 1st of every month send the change file. i.e. difference in data from Jan 1st to Feb 1st. It could include new hires, terminations and any other requested data changes for the said duration. It goes on every month. - Best accomplished with Core Connectors.

Through EIB also you could achieve the change detection, however it is not as simple as selecting the parameters during the launch.

Lets say, if the requirement is to send full file as output every time, we use EIB as the integration system.



General Questions to Understand Workday

General Questions to Understand Workday


Q) What are actions in the inbox?

Ans. Tasks the user must complete


Q) What are archives in the inbox?

Ans. Tasks the user has completed in the past


Q) Related Actions?

Ans. Able to easily navigate to related actions for any specified object


Q) Workday Community?

Ans. An interactive space where customers, partners, and workday SME'S can collaborate, learn and share the best practices to enhance their workday user experience.


Q) What is the name of the icon that allows you to view information (or) perform tasks on the landing page?

Ans. Worklet


Q) Search allows you to use partial searches, abbreviations and misspelled words? (T/F)

Ans. Not misspelled words


Q) What is the name and location of the icon you should select when you want to act on or make changes to an object?

Ans. Related Objects-Next to Objects [...] Represented by 3 dots.


Q) Security and Business Processes are considered cross application and impact all of Workday?

Ans. True


Q) What are objects?

Ans. Workday is object based, The data is stored in the form of objects. When you click on an object it brings up a related action icon


Q) EIB

Ans. Enterprise Interface Builder: Used to receive data, transform data, and deliver data


Q) Tenant

Ans. Each tenant has a unique URL, data in a tenant exists directly from another tenant


Q) GMS

Ans. Global Modern Services Tenant, a training tenant, sample data that is pre-populated by Workday


Q) Gold Tenant

Ans. The tenant being implemented


Q) Sandbox

Ans. Production Copy(Weekly) for testing information


Q) What are the 6 stages of tenant implementation?

GMS

Prototype

Design

Full Data Load

Testing 

Gold Tenant


Q) What are the three types of tenants used by the customer?

Production: Final Tenant (live working in)

Sandbox: Copy of production tenant (can do testing)

Sandbox Preview: Copy of production tenant (cannot do testing)


Q) What are the 2 ways to access tenant management in the Workday Customer Center?

Click "menu" drop down on the top left corner and select "tenant management'

Click "tenant management" title on right panel


Q) Proxy

Ans. Viewing Workday through another users eyes


Q) How do you start proxy?

Login to a tenant

Type in search bar "start proxy"

Select "start proxy"

Type a user name: example "Logan McNeil"


Q) What is HCM ?

Ans. Human Capitol Management. HCM is used for adding, editing, maintaining CORE employee data, transfers and terminations


Q) Personal Data Change

Ans. Personal Data Changes are made either by an Employee themselves or by the manager who has a certain security clearance


Q) Examples of Personal Data

Change of birth date

Change of national ID

Change of personal information

Update licenses 

Update visa information


Q) What is the position of an employee?

Ans. The position of an employee is a "seat" in the organization and the key element that ties together the job information, location, organizational information


Q) Remote Worker

Ans. Workers who are 100% off site.


Q) Security Levels

Ans. Who can access what information


Q) Related Action Icon

Ans. Three dots within a box. Next to an item where you can preform an action.


Q) Which app is designed for managers?

Ans. My Team


Q) How many max workers can be compared at one time using the Find Workers Report?

Ans. 5


Q) What is the virtual drive where generated reports can be stored?

Ans. Drive


Q) Which feature Displays action items and historical actions and business processes for a user

Ans. Inbox


Q) Searching on which value will return the search prefix a user has access to see

Ans. "?" (Type Question mark on the search bar)


Q) The search feature in workday returns all matching objects and actions a user has access to see

Ans. True


Q) What is the home page feature called in Workday?

Ans. Home


Q) Which in the list is not a search prefix: employee, bp, .org, worker?

Ans. Employee


Q) What landing page is given to tech admin and implementers' ?

Ans. Workbench


Q) The workday community is designed as a tool for workday development(T/F)?

Ans. False


Q) Where can you go to find out more about courses and additional training offered by Workday Education?

Ans. Training Catalog


Q) What is the best way to request that the development team make a new feature or enhancement a high priority?

Ans. Check out brainstorm and vote for features or enhancements that matter most to you


Q) Workday landing pages containing applications with related reports and tasks?

Ans. Home & Workbench


Q) The Find Workers Report allows you to compare up to 10 workers at a time(T/F)?

Ans. False


Q) Where can all workers find and configure their own applications?

Ans. Home Landing Page


Q) What is the name of the report that allows you to view workers by facet/criteria?

Ans. Find Worker


Q) Where do you access the Inbox?

Ans. From the inbox icon next to the worker's profile


Q) What is the search prefix to use when searching for BP?

Ans. bp:


Q) How do you distinguish between an employee and a contingent worker in workday?

Ans. Contingent workers are notated with a [C] next to their name


Q) You can choose which Self Service tasks to enable for your workers (T/F)?

Ans. True


Q) Name at least four self service tasks available in workday?

Ans. request time off, edit personal information, edit payment or withholding elections, create an expense report, request a leave of absence, enter time, etc


Q) A worker needs a workday account to be able to edit their Personal Information (T/F)?

Ans. True


Q) Name three Self Service tasks a manager can do in Workday to support their teams?

Ans. Transfer, promote, change job, change business title, terminate, start performance review, etc


Q) You cannot approve expense reports from your Inbox on a mobile device (T/F)?

Ans. False


Q) What is Workday?

Ans. Workday is an enterprise resource planning application (ERP). Workday offers modules like human resources, payroll, finance, and Student. It delivers these applications in a cloud model that allows people to work collaboratively in a real-time environment.


Q) What are the advantages of Workday?

Ans. Workday provides employees with more immediate access to data since transactions are real-time. Workday also offers greater flexibility. The reports that will be available to managers will give them more insight to their data, allowing them to make data-driven decisions.

Employees will be able to view or run their own reports on demand rather than having to request a report and waiting for the results of that request. Employees will be able to access and manage their own HR benefit elections, address changes, dependent changes, withholding exemptions, absence requests and time tracking entries, to name a few.


Q) Workday HCM ?

Ans. Workday Human Capital Management Workday Human Capital Management is the only application that unifies HR and Talent Management into a single system-of- record. And with embedded analytics, manager and employee self-service, and a user experience unlike any other enterprise application, Workday redefines what it means to manage a global, mobile, and diverse workforce.


Q) Key Features of Workday Human Capital Management?

• Talent Management

• Time Tracking

• Payroll Solutions

• Goal Management

• Performance Management

• Succession Planning

• Career and Development Planning

• Payroll Co-Sourcing Services

• Cloud Connect for Third-Party Payroll


Q) How much does Workday Human Capital Management cost?

Ans.  Pricing model: One-time Licence, Subscription


Q) Who are the typical users of Workday Human Capital Management?

Ans. Large Enterprises, Mid Size Business


Q) Does Workday Human Capital Management support mobile devices?

Ans. Workday Human Capital Management supports the following mobile devices:

   • iPhone

   • iPad


Q) Does Workday Human Capital Management offer an API?

Ans. No, Workday Human Capital Management does not have an API available.


Q) What is the goal of Workday?

Ans. A cloud based system that can be updated in real time. Workday aims to simplify the experiences of users.


Q) What are the major HCM Organizations?

Supervisory: Hierarchy of reporting

Company: The legal bindings of the company

Custom: Customization by each company

Cost: All companies and their costs

Regions: Global and affected areas


Q) What are the three teams that usually be working on the Workday implementation?

Business Team "We need this!"

Functional Team "We can do this!"

Tech Team "We can create this!"


Q) What is DA?

Ans. Delivery Assurance: A team of Workday consultants that guide the business in their implementation. This provides consistency and is a point of contact for clients


Q) What are the stages of Workday deployment?

Plan - Establish project management and administration with an agreed upon scope, create project goals, timeline, milestones, deliverable, resources and responsibilities

Architect - Customer and the Workday project team find a common understanding of customer needs. Design decisions are gathered in this stage.

Configure and Prototype - Data conversions for both configuration ad operational data are executed.

Test - Configured Workday system sufficiently meets the needs of the customers business. Each test effort has a different set of conditions and a different purpose.

Deploy- The "go live" stage. All test scripts have met their criteria and all configurations will be loaded into the "Gold Tenant"


How to make my Report Worklet enabled

How to make my Report Worklet enabled?


You could enable any of the below report types as your Worklet. (6 out of 8 report types) - Advanced, Composite, Matrix, nBox, Transposed, Trending

Simple Report and Search Report does not give an option to enable the report as Worklet.

Go to any report in the edit mode and see the Output tab.

Enable As Worklet - Check this checkbox to enable the report as Worklet
Available on - Provide the location as where this Worklet needs to be available
Maximum Number of Rows - Provide the number between 1-100 to display the rows as worklet
Maximize Report Options - Choose if you want to display worklet when maximized.
Refresh Data - Every Sign in / Every time
Worklet Icon - Select from the list of different icons available to display as worklet
Options - You may choose  the options Hide Table Borders , Hide Table Column Headings

Workday Schedules ( Service Updates )

Workday Schedules ( Service Updates )


Feature Release and Service Updates

There are two types of schedules that you can notice in Workday. One is "Feature Release" which is like an upgrade and the other being "Service Updates" which is like regular maintenance, or applying patches and fixes.


Feature release:

Workday Feature releases occur 2 times per year. Version Change happens with every Feature release. (Not Future release)

Do remember every single customer will be on the same version and it is the latest version.


-This includes New or Feature releases, Enhancements, Bug Fixes, additional Packaged Integrations etc.,

-When Workday rollout the updates, the customer system automatically converts to the newest release.

-Tenants are not available during the Feature release Weekend (which happens 2 times every year)


Dates: ( 2019 - 20 Schedule )

Previous Version - 32

February 4, 2019 - Features available for Preview

March      9,  2019 - Workday 32 available in all tenants


Previous Version - 33

August       3,  2019 - Features available for Preview

September 7,  2019 - Workday 33 available in all tenants

Here on the Versions are called with Year and Release, Example: 2020R1 , 2020R2 instead of WD34, WD35


Current Version - Workday 2020 Release 1 (Known as WD34)

February 1,  2020 - Features available for Preview

March      7,  2020 - Workday 34 available in all tenants


Upcoming Version - Workday 2020 Release 2 (Known as WD35)

August        8,  2020 - Features available for Preview

September 12,  2020 - Workday 35 available in all tenants


Service Updates:

Fixes are applied every Friday during Scheduled timings in the service updates.

During the scheduled updates you will notice the tenant will be down and a message saying "Workday is currently unavailable." with the duration of outage. Its generally a 12 hour window on a weekend for Non-Production environment.

Proxy Access - Non Production Tenants

Proxy Access - Non Production Tenants


What is Proxy?

The authority to represent someone else. For example if your Manager went on leave for 10 days, and there are multiple approvals pending on his/her side which are very important or urgent. In an ideal scenario your manager can delegate his/her work items to one of his peer or manager, so that they can complete the tasks on this behalf. This is called as Delegation, which happens in the Production tenants. 

But in Non-Production tenants as they are mostly your development and testing tenants, you don't need to really setup delegations, you can do the tasks with the help of Proxy. 

Only in the non- Production tenants we have the provision to work as Proxy.

Start Proxy:
This is the task code to Start Proxy as another user.

Stop Proxy:
This is a task code to stop Proxy and come back to the original login what you were.

You can view details about users starting and stopping a proxy session on the Signons and Attempted Signons report.


A proxy session excludes access to certain Workday functionality as well as functionality that requires connecting to another service, including:

-Access to documents on My Reports.
-Background conversions.
-Business form printing.
-Email.
-Integrations (including Reports as a Service, REST API, and Workday Studio).
-Mobile Push Notifications.
-Notifications received through the user interface.
-Scheduled reports.
-Solutions.
-Workday Drive.

Prefix: intsys

Prefix: intsys

Integration Systems

You can find all the integrations Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) , Cloud Connect (both Packaged Connector, Core Connector), Workday Studio easily with the usage of prefix - intsys

This Prefix will come really handy for you when you are searching for any integrations in your tenant.

intsys: (keyin your search keywords)

Example - 

intsys: INT221 EIB out

Steps to Enable Report as Web Service

Steps to Enable Report as Web Service


When to use report as web server ?

-You can use the web service enabled report in an Outbound EIB.
-It can be used by an External web site if you enable your report as web service.

Note:

Only ADVANCED and SEARCH Report types allows you to make your report Web service enabled.

You can also set up Web Services Options on the Advanced tab of the report definition.

Tuesday 21 December 2021

What is Human Capital Management (HCM) ?

What is Human Capital Management (HCM) ? 


The Human Capital Management consists of Core HR, Recruitment, Compensation Management, Performance Management, Time and Leave Management, Benefits and Payroll.

 



 Below are the modules of HCM:

 

Recruitment: recruitment is the process of finding and acquiring skilled human labor for organizational needs and to meet any labor requirement, also the recruitment module is used to administer the hiring process.

 






 

 

Core HR: This is the module where core organizational policies such as onboarding, transfer and promotions are managed. Core HR is the essential bulk of information and processes that pertain to the employees in any organization.

 





 

 

Performance Management: It's a systematic process of managing and monitoring the employees performance against their key performance parameters or goals and based on their performance the ratings are given at the end of the year.

 





 

 

Compensation Management: This is the module where organization's salary structure is administered. It is also involves setting up annual compensation budgets across departments, awarding employees the salary increment based on their appraisal ratings every year.

 





 

Time and Leave Management: this is the module where employees report their working hours through timesheets which is then used to calculate their wages, it also includes facilitating the employees to plan paid and unpaid vacations, sick time, FMLA etc.

 


 


  

Benefit: It is used to administer benefit plans that a company offer to its employees. This module manages the entire life cycle of benefit enrollment and the payroll deductions generated for them.

 

 

 



 

 

Payroll: this modules calculate the wages and salaries of organization's workforce and generates various documents for analysis and reporting purpose. This module takes input from various other modules like time and absence, benefit, and Core HR.

 

 


 

 

 




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