Workday: Core Connector Templates

The delivered Workday Report-Integration Template Catalog provides a list of all integration templates

The following are some of the most commonly used Workday Core Connector templates for Integration:

Core Connector for HCM -Templates:

Core Connector: Worker

Core Connector: Positions

Core Connector: Locations

Core Connector: Job Requisitions

Directory Service

E-Verify - Employment Verification

Core Connector: Job Profile and Job Family

Core Connector: Organization Inbound

Core Connector: Organization Outbound

Integration - Templates:

Enterprise Interface Builder  (EIB Related)

Cloud Integration Template   (Studio related)

Document Transformation

Cloud Connect for Benefits - Templates:

CIGNA: Medical, Dental, Wellness, FSA

Guardian: Dental, Vision, Insurance

Delta Dental of CA: Dental

Aetna: FSA, HSA, Life, Disability

MetLife: Dental, Vision

HealthPartners: Medical, Dental, Vision, Rx

Cloud Connect for Third Party Payroll - Templates:

Payroll Interface

PI External Results Inbound (Do Not Use)

Import External Payslips

Payroll Effective Change Interface

PECI - Merge Files Integration Template

External Payroll Results Inbound

Worker Effective Change Interface

iLoad- Templates:

iLoad Bulk: Process Input File Template

iLoad Bulk: Doc Splitter

Workday: Integration Approach Steps

1. First check for Packaged Connectors (Delivered) for the third party directly which with a little tweak can help achieve the need.
2. Next check if there are any Core Connectors which are template based and can help achieve the need of the integration.
3. Next step should be to check if we can do it with a combination of custom report and Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) .
4. If any of the above does not help meet the requirement, then use Workday Studio. This is the final place where we should be able to design and build 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 combination
• Workday Studio                      - Multiple output files, Read from different sources , Exceptions etc.                                                                                                   

Workday Integration : Related Terms & Glossary

Integration System

A tenanted definition of an integration between Workday and an external system based on a template that provides the methodology for communicating data.

Reference ID

A unique identifier used to look up data for integration purposes.

System User

An account associated with and required to launch a Connector or Studio integration. Workday delivered integrations and custom integrations require a system user account for authentication and web service calls. A system user account is not associated with a person in Workday.

Integration Template

A collection of integration services that enables communication between Workday and an external system. Workday provides integration templates in categories such as Benefits, Financials, HCM, Payroll, Payroll Interface, Procurement, Recruiting, Security, and Settlement. Many of the delivered templates contain default values for attributes, as well as prompt values for attributes and maps, to define the integration further.

Integration Event

The record of an integration process. Every integration—current or past, involving the import or export of data, successful or not—gets recorded as an integration event. The integration event contains all the information about the integration process, including its status.

Connector

A set of  one or more integration templates that provide a framework for building integrations in a particular functional area. The integration can support a specific type of data, or can support a specific endpoint ( vendor, legacy system, third party payroll )

Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB)

An integration tool that enables us to create simple, secure, and customizable integrations with Workday. Alternately, an EIB is a simple integration created by the integration tool. An EIB consists of an integration system, an integration data source, an integration transformation, and an integration transport protocol.

Integration Field Overrides

A service that lets us customize integration systems that are based on a connector template. Field overrides are managed through an integration service. They use calculated fields or report fields to supply values to an integration system. Example: member IDs in benefit provider integrations.

Integration Attribute

An integration component that specifies the tenanted value of a data element in Workday. Example: Master Policy Number is a type of attribute in benefit provider integrations.

Integration Data Source

Indicates the type of data that Workday receives from or exports to an external system and its location.

Workday Web Services

Workday’s public API. Based on open standards, Workday Web Services (WWS) provide the core method for integration with Workday.

Integration Map

An integration component that specifies how values in Workday map to values in an external system. Example: Pay Rate Frequency is a type of map in third-party payroll integrations.

Integration Service

A group of related integration attributes, maps, and XSLT that provides a framework to transform Workday data into the format required by an external system.

Integration Transformation

Converts data into a format that Workday or a receiving external system can understand. Workday provides some delivered transformations, and we can also create custom transformations.

Integration Transport Protocol

Controls how Workday exports data to an external endpoint or service or imports the data from an external endpoint or service. Workday supports several types of transport protocols, including email, FTP and SFTP, HTTP/SSL, Workday attachments, and Workday Web Services.

Workday Studio

An Eclipse-based development environment that enables us to build more complex integrations with Workday.

Workday : Studio Integration

Workday Studio

Workday Studio is one of the 3 ways of building your integrations. (Other two are EIB and Core Connector)

Below are some of the details.

Cloud Explorer :

This is the place where we connect studio to the Tenant. It could be any tenant.
Need to pass on Tenant Name, User ID, Password in order to get connected.

Preferences > Workday > Connections

** Be cautious when right clicking on the project / Integration, Don't tend to click on remove, which will remove from the server / tenant.

Project Explorer :

This is the preview of the work space or local file system. Each folder is an integration. Clicking on Assembly will open the design .

Outline:

Gives the complete picture of the integration, where we can navigate easily. Check out for different views by clicking the 4 different icons in Outline window.

Design | Tree Structure | mVal | Props(properties) and Variables

Schema Explorer:

We can add WSDL or WSD / We can add WWS (Mostly used for)  / You can add Custom Report schema (Raas) / XSLT

3 different perspectives in seeing the applications -- WD | Debug | Design Report (BIRT)

How To Plan For A Successful Data Conversion In Your Move to Oracle Cloud ERP

Many organizations are moving to Oracle Fusion cloud services, taking advantage of the enhanced levels of support and overall reduction in cost of ownership the product offers. If your organization is preparing to implement Fusion ,in this post, I will focus on one of the big ones, the impact of which can often be underestimated: Data Conversion for Oracle Cloud ERP.

No matter which system you’re moving away from (PeopleSoft, Oracle EBS, etc.), exporting the data you need and loading it to Fusion will be a tedious and time-consuming effort (just as any data conversion effort from one system to another would be). However, with proper planning it can be executed logically and methodically, minimizing potential roadblocks and the risk of unpleasant surprises.

Because Cloud ERP is a SaaS product, you will not have access to update any of the tables yourself and instead must leverage the data conversion tools Oracle provides for populating Fusion with your organization’s data. The primary tool you’ll work with is File-Based Data Loader (FBDL), HCM Data Loader (HDL) and it’s critical to take the time upfront to understand how the tool works and which business objects it supports .

I will be following up on a few data conversion approaches that can be taken to reduce time and effort spent on converting data with the use of open source tools. We can use the tools to do data profiling of the data upfront to report on data quality and build conversion logic using ETL based approach to make the transition smooth during extracting data.

Understanding Oracle Cloud HCM Transaction Design Studio

The Transaction Design Studio is available within the HCM Experience Design Studio in its initial BETA phase. There are limited features and actions available to configure at this time. Transaction Design Studio It allows you create rules to configure transactions and pages in the responsive user designed pages. You can change how sections and fields are displayed, based on the user’s role and the employee’s business unit or legal employer. You can:

• Control the visibility of regions and sections on the page.
• Control the visibility for attributes within a page, region, or a section.
• Change the required status of optional attributes.
• Control the availability of the questionnaire page for actions that use the guided process design.

You can create one or more rules for any page available in the Transaction Design Studio to manage your business needs. For example:

• Make different fields visible and required in the new hire flow for employees in the US and employees in other countries.

• If employees in the US don’t get salary increases as part of a promotion, hide the salary and compensation regions for US employees only, while making these regions available for employees in other countries when being promoted.

• Hide the Ethnicity and Religion fields from the Personal Details page for countries or legal employers that you don’t want to store that information. You can still modify the person spotlight and upload images for pages that use the HCM landing page design.

BUSINESS VALUE OF TRANSACTION DESIGN STUDIO

Using Transaction Design Studio is easy. The design is like any other newly designed responsive page for a seamless experience. And when configuring a page or transaction, the sections and fields map directly to the user-facing page so you know exactly what you’re looking at and configuring. Once you save a rule, you can quickly test it by accessing the page from global search or quick actions to see the results of your configured rule. There’s no more guessing what part of the page you need to edit or needing to use complex EL expressions to vary the page as when using page composer. You don’t need a technical resource to create or maintain your rules, so as business rules change, your HR analyst can make the change themselves. Really complex business requirements may require you to use page composer, but in general, configuring your pages for different populations of employees is just a lot simpler now.

Contextual Analysis in Talent Management

The use of contextual information which takes into account the holistic view of a worker is essential to foster a more engaged workforce and management team for the Company. Users expect the underlying data to give insight into the individual’s contributions and the overall impact to the company’s bottom line.

Application context passing to embedded reports for the application and the module to be specific is a unified approach for better information sharing within the Fusion Applications promoting equality of opportunity in the workplace. Contextual analysis provides immediately accessible and relevant contextualized reporting that can transform performance reviews across Organization. Organizations need to enable greater connectivity between the information in real-time reporting with other corporate information.

Questions employees care about most:

• What and how should I develop to be more successful?
• How am I doing? How do I fit into the bigger picture?
• What is next step for me? What opportunities are available to re affirm strengths and align individual goals with purpose and direction.

Key result areas managers concern most:

• Am I bringing the best of my direct reports?
• Is my team engaged? Are we working towards vital priorities?
• Ability to give feedback in the moment and surmount the limits to growth.

Problems organizational leaders face:

• Adaptive challenges in talent development as well as culture change.
• The gender imperative.
• How work gets done and how performance is measured/rewarded.

Use of the simplest and most cost effective analytics will lead to a solid career conversation driving top performance.

• Individual Potential to Improve and Grow
• Long-term Goals Rating History
• Sales Performance Goals
• Pay for Performance Metric
• Personal Qualities and Attributes

Cost Comparison for Point-2-Point and Middle ware based integration

Point-to-point integration, also known as one-to-one integration is the simpler of the two integration models. Point-to-point integration is very tightly coupled and is used when a sender has to send a message to a single receiver (that is, a 1:1 relationship).

While adequate for simple integration, this model is quickly unmanageable for larger integration requirements because of the n(n-1) connections rule (also referred to as the n-squared problem).

As an example, assume that four different systems have to be integrated. This means that the total number of connections can be up to 12 (a bi-directional connection counts as two connections). This rarely happens in practice, but it does illustrate how quickly this integration model can become unmanageable with even a small number of systems. Hence, this model should be adopted when the number of systems that need to be adopted is fairly small.

Figure 1 illustrates how fast the number of connections can grow.

Figure 1  The n(n-1) rule for point-to-point integration

Another drawback of this model is that it’s fairly fragile. By its nature, point-to-point integration is used for synchronous communications. If the receiver is down, the entire system can fail (or at the very least, hang) because of the tight coupling between the sender and the receiver.

The tightly coupled nature of the point-to-point integration results in a ripple effect whenever there is a change or update in one system, thus impacting every other systems integrating with the system undergoing the change.

Following are the reasons why this model is harmful for infrastructure:

• Exponential Increase in Complexity
• Single Points Of Failure
• No Course Of Action For Emergencies
• Loss of Business Agility
• Inflexible and Brittle
• Expensive to maintain
• Cannot implement new standards

Middle ware Integration

Middleware is application-independent software that provides services that mediate between applications. Middleware hides the complexities of the underlying operating system and network in order to facilitate the easy integration of new and legacy systems. This is a means for connecting clients to servers, clients to clients, and servers to servers without having to navigate through many operating systems, networks or resources server layers. There are two types of middleware, logical, that is related with how information moves through the organization and physical, that really moves the information and covers the technology used for this purpose.

P2P vs SOA Cost Comparison