Interview Questions: Reporting

Reporting Interview Questions

What are Advance reports?

Advanced reports enable you to perform many actions on your data from primary and related business objects, including: Counting, Grouping, Summarizing, Totaling.

Output format of these reports can be table and charts.

Which filter would execute first? Filter or sub filter?

Sub filter will execute first. Because sub filters are applied on related business object, so it will filter most of the data using sub filters and then remaining data using filters.

What is RAAS?

RAAS is a normal report which is web service enabled. Making a report as web service enable will help to call that report in EIB, studio Integrations and BIRT. Otherwise, we cannot call that report in EIB, Studio or BIRT.

What are the steps to create a report?

Choose Report type and Data Source>>  Select Objects and Fields>>  Order Columns>>  Sort Output>>  Define Filter Criteria

What is Workday Reporting? What are the types of workday reports?

Workday reporting is a tool to gain information on data which is stored in workday. This information can be in table format, chart format etc.

Types: There are 2 types of Workday Reports. Custom report, Standard Reports.

Standard Reports are again of two types.

Xpresso Reports:

    These reports are delivered reports. User cannot edit these reports. User can only run reports for which S/he have access to.

Report Writer:

These reports are delivered reports. User can not directly edit these reports. User have to copy these reports and then user can edit that report.

Custom reports:

These are the custom reports created by user using report writer tool. The task to create custom report is “Create custom report”. The person who create the report is owner of that report.

How to make report as web service enable?

There are 2 ways to make a report as web service enable.

• While creating an advance report, you can find a checkbox to make report as web service enable.
• After creating a report, you can also go to advance tab and select web service enable checkbox. This way you can also disable report as web service, so it cannot be used in EIB, Studio and BIRT. 

What is difference between advance reports and simple reports?

Simple reports will not have option to sub filter, prompts and will have less functionality, wherein advance reports will have these features.

Also, simple reports cannot be used as web service.

The Tab on the Report definition allows you to control the order in which data will be presented and grouped is

Sort

Which Report cannot publish Web service?

Simple

What is the task to convert a report from simple to advanced?

Related action >> custom report >> Change to Advanced Report type

How do you compare the WD reporting with Relational DB?

Data Source           - View 

Object                    - Table 

Related Object       - Child Table 

Class Report Field - (CRF) Column 

Instance                 - Row

What is Matrix Report?

Matrix reports are similar, but not identical to, pivot tables and cross-tabs found in other systems. You group data in a row group and optionally a column group. Values in the matrix cells display aggregate values scoped to the intersection of the row and column groups to which the cell belongs.

What is RAAS?

You may create custom reports and enable them as a web service to be used in an Outbound EIB (Enterprise Integration Builder) as a data source. If you select this option, then you must also define Column Heading Override and Group Column Heading values on the Columns tab, and provide Label Overrides for all prompts on the Prompts tab.

What is Worklets?

A worklet is a report that can be displayed in a "tile" on the Workday "landing pages", which are: My Workday, All About Me, and My Team, and the Dashboard slide-out. Worklets provide users quick access to frequently referenced data and tasks common to a specific functional area.

You can create your own worklets by using the Report Writer and specifying either the advanced or the matrix report type, and then selecting Enable As Worklet on the Output tab. If you choose to share a worklet, it becomes available for authorized users to select when configuring their Workday landing pages.

What is Trended Worker Data source?

Trended Worker Data source encompasses a number of fields that fall into 3 general categories: 

Monthly worker snapshots. This type of data includes data about  workers as of the last day of the month, including compensation data, headcount numbers, and biographical information. 

Staffing events. These include hires, terminations, transfers, promotions, changes in position, addition or deletion of additional jobs, move events, and international assignments. 

Calculated metrics. These are calculations ,we can make based on the trended data, such as turnover rate and span of control. 

Workday automatically updates the Trended Workers data source at the end of each month. Data is collected for the last 36 months (that is, data is collected for as many months that are available in Workday, up to 36 months). Any data older than 36 months is automatically purged from the data source. Additionally, any retroactive changes that have been made to a worker in the last 3 months are automatically incorporated into the trended data.

What is Trending report?

Using Trending Report, Workday enables to report on and analyze trends in worker data such as headcount and attrition through a number of Workday delivered standard reports. We could create custom Trending report types that use trended data. By using either standard reports or custom reports, we can analyze important trends in our workforce directly in Workday, without the need for a third-party analytical tool. 

At the core of all trending report types is the Trended Workers data source. 

What is Indexed Data source?

Indexed data sources are a special type of data source optimized for performance, aggregation, and faceted filtering on large volumes of data.

Can custom  field be used in Report?

Yes.

What are the different types of custom reports? 

Simple, Advanced, Matrix, nBox, Search, Composite, Transposed, Trending.

What is the difference between Filter and Sub-Filter?

Filter is used to provide filter condition for Primary Business Object and Sub-Filter is used to provide filter condition for Secondary Business Object

Additional Reads

Workday Standard Reports

Workday Custom Reports

Workday EIB Interview Questions

Workday Security Interview Questions

Workday Core Connectors Interview Questions

PECI vs PICOF

Firstly we need to know the two common terms most frequently being referred in Payroll integrations

PICOF abbrevates to Payroll Integration Common Output File. (Pronounced as PeCOFF)

PECI abbrevates to Payroll Effective Change Interface. (Pronounced as Peechy)

WECI abbrevates to Worker Effective Change Interface. (Pronounced as Weechy)

PICOF:

PICOF is currently an end-of-life product as referred by workday which means it will no longer comes with additional enhancements or changes or features to the integration system. It does not support Effective dating / Sequence of records to represent all effective changes but provides you with the top of the stack row. Can only scan future dated transactions for worker status changes configured. Corrections and Rescinds are not well handled and there is a HTML report that is generated. In PICOF Full Extract can be indicated using an integration attribute or the Full Diff service and launch parameter. 

PECI:

The entire focus is shifted to PECI now. PECI vs PICOF will be driven according to how the data is expected by your payroll provider. Workday recommends to use PECI for Payroll interface integrations. 

PECI supports Effective dating / Sequence of records to represent all worker effective changes. PECI can scan up-to additional 2 pay periods of all kinds of worker changes, PECI connectors give more effective detailed data. PECI connector gives ability to scan for all effective changes even in future pay periods. PECI allows you to add field overrides for most of the relevant sections that e.g. allows you to handle additional fields for multiple positions correctly. PECI enables you to handle special events like termination rescind, hire rescind, corrections in a proper way, as it outputs them with the special event codes.

PECI integration template is what workday certified third party payroll providers use to get data from Workday. This is being constantly improved and new features are being added on a regular basis. It can run up to 50 pay groups per one instance. If you have more than that, you can categorize the PECI by region based to keep the limit of pay groups per instance to less than 50. 

In PECI Full Extract is indicated using a launch parameter. PECI is simplified to use less attribute configuration in comparison with PICOF. You can run PECI in Full Snapshot (launch parameter), this will give you ALL current data not just changes only.

Corrections and Rescinds especially for Hire, Term and some Leave events are better handled with unique event codes in the xml. You have additional control of reporting the transactions from the pay groups and recently Workday added new functionality to track Last Date Extracted at worker level

PECI has the limitation of handling only 150,000 worker records. As this is quite a new solution when it comes to Workday Connectors having some minor glitches, but still it's one of the most powerful connectors currently available in Workday.

Effective Stack change detection in PECI allows you to capture all the changes between the two integration runs with the corresponding effective and entry date vs one snapshot per Employee in PICOF where there is a risk of data loss in case if there were multiple changes to the same piece of data between 2 integration runs

If you are just trying to use change detection logic that PECI uses, you can also use Worker Change Effective Interface template. Both these integration templates use workday DIS Service to produce effective changes. Also, the tenant has to be Grid Enabled by Workday if you plan to use PECI or WECI..

Proxy Access - Non Production Tenants

Proxy Access to 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 to Start Proxy as another user.

Stop Proxy:

This is a task 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.

Additional Reads:
Delegation in Workday
Reassign Task

Interview Questions: Security

Workday Security Interview Questions

There is no inheritance for business process security policies (true / false)

True

Roles are used to drive business process management (true / false)

Yes

Which type of security groups is optional and customer-defined?

Job Based Security Group is optional

What type of Security Group are these: Report Writer; Setup Administrator ?

User Based Security Group

Editing a security policy takes effect immediately? (true / false)

False (Need to ‘Activate Pending Security Policy Changes)

The following are true about User-Based Security Groups

Grants access across the system

Multiple people can be members if same user-based security group

Is it possible to activate a previous timestamp while making changes needed to fix present security configuration?

  Yes
   

 You may configure securable actions and securable reporting items in a domain security policy.

 False

The following report views permissions the specified user has an action & also security policies and groups that grant access

 Security Analysis for Action

What are the different ways to assign security groups?

By the system based on a process

Manually

 Is Report Writer a role-based security group

No

  Which of the following is not securable area of business process

 Create new sub-processes

 In case a secured item is included in more than one domain security policy, workers who are granted different levels of access permission in different domains get the most access granted

  True

The following report views all domain security policies and business process security policies that use the security group:          

      Action Summary for Security Group

  Editing a child security policy does not affect inheritance in any of the others

 True

 Which Security Group is required for you to access custom reports 

  Report Writer User Based Security Group

  Can a role-based security tag to more than one org?

 Yes

  In Security Breach, whom should you contact?

  security@workday.com

 What are the steps to create Role Based Security?

 Steps-Org Role>>Maintain Org Role>>Attach the Role

 What are the two components of Workday Security?

Domain Security

Business Security

 How to disable Functional area?

Maintain Functional area

How to activate security policy?

    Activate pending Security Policy

What determines access to landing page?

Security

Which Report is used to see the Security Policy?

View Security for Securable Item
 

      Defined tasks and reports that are functionally similar

      Domains

This dictates who can view / modify data w/in the domain

Domain Security Policies

What dictates who can participate in the business process

Business Process Policies

Type of security group automatically assigned based on user’s job criteria

Job based security group

   Security policies designate permissions for security groups to view, or view and modify tasks within the domain

      Domain Security Policy

     Security Policies contain such securable items as initiation steps, step actions, and actions on the process as a whole

      Business Process Security Policy

Can you reassign a task to anyone?

No (It can be assigned to the users who have relevant security group in BP Security Policy).

Which dictates who can participate in BP?

Business Process Security Policy

------------ are assigned to users  based on administrative responsibility

  User-based

 ------------ are found as a related action off worker’s name

  User-based

 ----------- are assigned to users are based on criteria selected

  Job based

 ------------- are used to only approve business process management tasks; they do not determine task or report access and cannot initiate a business process

Job roles

 --------- report views all details about security group membership, security policies in which the group is used, the permissions it has and the functional area

  View Security Group

 ------- is automatically assigned based on criteria selected

Job based

 ------------- is used to restore inheritance in a child policy

Use Parent Permissions

Additional Reads:

Workday Core Connectors Interview Questions

Workday EIB Interview Questions

Workday Custom Reports

Custom Reports

Apart from Workday - Standard Reports, Workday allows you to create Custom Reports. There are variety of reports that you can create.

Task: Create Custom Report

There are 8 different reports that you can create depending on the need of the reporting.

1. Simple
2. Advanced
3. Matrix
4. Search
5. nBox
6. Composite
7. Transpose
8. Trending

Up on the Report Type selection, dynamically some more fields will show up. I will discuss in further posts on each of the report type.

Workday Custom Report

Workday Standard Reports

Standard Reports

Standard Reports are the delivered reports by Workday. Workday offers two types of Standard Reports.

1. XpressO

2. Report Writer

The main difference between both the report types is you can not copy or clone XpressO reports but you can copy the Report Writer type report.

You can run both the reports. For XpressO reports you will not see related actions but for Report Writer you can see the related actions where you can see the options like Copy, Run , Schedule (See in the screenshot below)

You can access the delivered report "Workday Standard Reports" to view all the delivered reports. Make use you have access to it.

Report Name: Workday Standard Reports,

You can select the report categories like Benefits, Compensation, Time, Core HR etc., to fetch the delivered reports.

Workday Standard Reports

Workday Standard Reports

Workday Report Writer

Workday XpressO Report

Search Category and Synonym Setup

Search Categories

You may be wondering why my search results are pointed to a specific category ( mostly Common) once you type your words in the search bar and hit enter.

To change this default, you need to access the task "Edit Tenant Setup - Search".  Make sure you have enough permissions to access this task.

Under Search Category, change it to your preferred Category. (In the second screen shot below)

Below screen shows the keyword 'hire' and the category on the left pointing to Common.

Workday Search Page - Search Categories and Results

Search Synonyms

Search Synonyms are something which you want to see in the search results based on what you predefine. 

Say, for Example when you type Affordable Care and search in the search bar, it results in some reports and tasks. Affordable care is often called as Obama Care, so if you want to refer the affordable care, you can simply search for obama care as a synonym. Here 

        Workday Term is Affordable Care

               Synonym is Obama Care

Access the task "Edit Tenant Setup - Search" under Search Synonym Workday currently has a "Tenant Setup - Search" area, this allows you to create synonymous search terms and associate them with WD delivered terms. e.g. Employee = Worker, Workers etc.

Do remember this is not ad search prefixes, 

Search Category and Search Synonym Setup

Synonyms in different languages can be listed together. However, if many synonyms will be defined across several languages, it is recommended to define synonyms in the tenant base language and then use the Business Object Translation task to create translations in other languages.

Additional Reads
Workday Search Prefixes

Search Prefix

Search Prefixes

What if you want to search for a specific items in Workday? Say, you wanted to see only Supervisory Organizations when you type in your keyword in the search bar. Ideally the search results will return all the items that match with your keyword. Search Prefix will favor us in narrowing down to the specific targeted items that you want to see.

You can limit search results by prepending your search text with one of the Search Prefixes delivered by Workday.
Your Prefix should be followed by a colon to tell system that you are searching with a prefix text. To find the list of Search Prefixes in your tenant, just type "?" and hit enter. It will produce the Search Prefixes report. Apply filter on "To Find" to identify your desired values.

Workday Search Prefixes

To Find: Any Object that you want to find in specific, Say it reports or Business Objects or Organizations
Type This Prefix: the prefix to be used while searching to view specific results
Search Category: Categories that this item belongs to. Like a tag.

For Example:

to find only Supervisory organizations, begin your search text with 'sup:'

to find only workers, begin your search text with 'worker:'

to find only integrations, begin your search text with 'intsys:'

to find only report definitions, begin your search text with 'rd:'

To my knowledge this is delivered and maintained by Workday and you do not have a way to edit the search prefixes.

Interview Questions: Core Connectors

Workday Core Connectors Interview Questions

Here is the list of Interview Questions related to Core Connector Integrations.

What are Core Connectors and type of connectors?

       Workday connectors are the type of Integration by which we can send or receive data from external endpoints.   
Core Connector is a pre-build Integration Template used to connect third party endpoint, which provide a method of integrating with Workday and ensure that external systems receive only the data you want to expose.

Packaged Connectors – Also called as delivered connectors. These type of integration connectors are designed for specific vendors. No additional coding is required. We need to perform some basic configuration and they are ready for launch.

Core Connectors – These are more generic templates which we can use with any third-party vendor. Here we have to do coding to meet vendor specific requirements like file format etc. So, here more configuration is needed in comparison with Packaged connectors.

How do you configure a Field Override Service?
Step 1: Go to Related Actions of integration >> Configure Integration Services >> Custom Integration Services >> Click on Create >> select "Create Integration Field Override Service".

Step 2: Enter the name to the service and select Business Object on which you wanted the fields. Also add the alias for the fields that you wanted to use. Click ok.

Step 3: Go to integrations system>> Configure Integration Field Overrides and then click on the service that you have created on the left hand side (usually after Define Eligibility).

Step 4: Select the fields that you want to additionally add under override external fields section. These fields will show up under additional section in xml output file of integration.

What is a Field Override Service?
Field override service is used to add extra fields such as calculated fields in the output as these fields are not available under any service.

How can we add additional fields in Connectors?

        Through Field Override Service

What is the use of XSLT in an integration?

You use XSLT ( eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) to transform the input or output data going into an XML document. Learn here w3schools

What is a WSDL? Why are they important?
WSDL stands for Web Service Description Language, and they are important because they specify how XML documents should be formatted to be accepted as input or define the output of Workday Web Services.

What is the Search prefix that you can use to search all integrations?
intsys:

Name some Integration ID types?
Workday ID, External ID, Reference ID

What are the different audit files that get generated for your Cloud Connector?
Data Changes Audit - This audit holds the relevant data changes. For each worker, displays the Integration Field Override Service name, field name, current and prior field values, and worker transactions for each field included on the integration output file.
Diagnostic Audit - This audit holds the data relevant to eligible entrants from the core connector.
Both of them are of file type .html

What is the use of Suppress Audit Report and where to configure?
In Configure Integration Attributes, you have the option to enable / disable “Suppress Audit Reports” integration attribute by checking or unchecking the checkbox you configure. If you check this checkbox, Core connector doesn't generate this audit file - DiagnosticAudit.html. By default it is unchecked.
Which file is deliverable when you run your Core Connector?

Outputfile.xml:

This is the real output file which can be sent to vendor. We can also apply transformation on this to change the output file format or data in it according to requirements. This file will have by default “deliverable” tag which specifies that this file is deliverable to vendor if delivery is configured.

What are the Date Launch parameters available for Core connector Worker ?
There are 4 date launch parameters available:
As of entry moment: This is the transaction or data entered date which says, till which date the integration has to pick the records.
Last successful as of entry moment: This is the transaction or data entered date which says, what was the most recently used As of entry moment in the last successful Integration (Refers to last integration run). If this is your first time run, then it will be null.
Effective date: This is transaction effective date for the data entered in the system (As of entry moment) which says, till which date the integration has to pick the records.
Last successful effective date: This is the transaction effective date for the data entered in which says, what was the most recently used Effective date in the last successful Integration (Refers to last integration run). If this is your first time run, then it will be null.

How to send output files to external endpoints and what are the available options in that?
We can deliver output files to external endpoints such as SFTP/FTP using delivery service which is provided by workday. We have to add delivery through business process step. So once integration is successful and document is generated, next step will run through Business Process which will be document delivery.

How do you Configure Delivery?
On your Integration,
Step1: Go to business process >> create, copy or link definition.
Add a new step ‘c’, select the type as “service” and in specify select “document delivery”. Click OK.
Step2: You will get an error that the delivery endpoint is not configured. Click on “Configure Document Delivery” to configure endpoint.
Step3: Select the transport type from the list. Enter the credentials. Click OK.

How to configure a Core Connector to show the hires in last 1 month?
To achieve this, you configure the relanvent Core Connector services.
In Transaction log set to Hire BP only. This way it will look only for hire transactions as per our requirement.
Set the 4 important launch parameters:
As of entry moment: This will be current date and time.
Effective date: This will be today's date as I want to check till today
Last successful as of entry moment: This will be a date field which will have value (today – 30) days.
Last effective date: This will be again (today – 30) days.
This way integration will look for employees hired in last 30 days.

What are the other launch Parameters apart from dates in Core Connectors Worker?
Workers: This is a filter, while you want to run your integration for a specific list of Workers, then here you have a choice to select specific workers for which you want to see the transactions. This is an optional.
Restrict results by orgs: This is again a filter, while you want to run your integration for a specific list of Organizations, then here you have a choice to select specific Orgs for which you want to see the transactions. This is an optional.
Full File: This is a checkbox item. If you check this check box, then the integration will not look for changes and gives you all values as of integration run date. This ignores Last successful as of entry moment and Last successful effective date. If you don’t select this option, then it will only find changes and only include those records in output who have changes in one or more output fields. By default this option is not selected.

How to select fields for the output of integration?
Firstly you need to select the service related to which you want to show in the output. For Example If you want compensation related fields in your output, then select checkbox against “Core Connector: Worker / Worker Compensation Data Section Fields”
Then go to “Configure Integration Field Attributes” and select the fields that you need in output.

How to configure Notifications for Integration events?
We can send notifications to users or groups up on Integration abort, errors, completion etc. Below are the steps:
Step1: Go to Integration system >> Integration Notifications
Step2: Select when you want to send notification like if status is aborted, failed, completed etc.
Step3: Select the recipients. You can add a list of Email Id’s or particular security groups like integration admin to send notification to whole group.
Step4: Write the message content so that it will be easy to understand to recipient.

Which all transactions we can select to include in output file? Can we select all?
Yes, we can select all transaction or business processes to include in output.
We can achieve this using Configure Integration Transaction Log option  However, first we have to select the transaction log service while selecting services.

Select the checkbox for Override default values to do modifications.
To select all transactions, select subscribe to all transaction types.
To select specific transactions, enter the transaction name and subscribe to specific transaction types.

What are the steps involved in creating a core connector?
Step1: Search for task “Create integration system”. Enter name for integration and select template for integration. Example - “core connector worker” which provides demographic data for workers.
Step2: Select the services as per the need / requirement. Check the appropriate check boxes.
Step3: You will get an error stating “Page Error - There are Integration Attributes enabled for this Integration System that are marked as "Required for Launch", but do not have a Value assigned to them."
Please use the Related Menu Item Integration System >> Configure Integration Attributes to complete the configuration. Assign the values to attributes as per requirement. There are some mandatory attributes which will be shown as “Required for launch”.
Step4: You can define eligibility conditions or criteria. Go to Integration System >> Configure Integration Field Override. Eligibility condition will evaluate which workers are eligible for this integration. You need to select Boolean field under “Override external field”.
Step5: Then as per the requirement you can select fields which vendor wants in output through Integration System >> Configure Integration Field Attributes.
Step6: If your vendor is expecting any additional fields which are not in the core connector, then you can use field override service to add those additional fields.
Step7: Launch/Schedule Integration

Can we give custom name to output file as per vendor requirement?
Yes, We can achieve this using sequence generator. Go to Integration system >> Configure Integration Sequence Generators.
We have to specify the values under Sequence definition as per requirements.

What is mapping and how to map fields in integration?

Mapping is used to map workday fields to external values. 
For Example if you want to map Gender values, Workday stores values like Male, Female, Unknown. How ever your vendor wants to see the values as M, F, U  
So you map it this way Male- M, Female- F, Unknown- U
Your output file will hold these values(M, F, U) instead of Workday delivered values.

Additional Reads:
Workday EIB Interview Questions

I will keep updating this page with some more questions.