Maintain Difficulty To Fill - Task

Maintain Difficulty To Fill

When ever you try to create a Job Profile, or a Position or a Job Requisition you get to see a field called Difficulty to Fill where you may need to pick one of the values populated. Every organization have a different meaning for "Difficult" or "Easy" or "Hard" , you could set this up in the task to configure any additional items if you need.

From Create Position task

From Create Job Profile task


Here is the task where you can add any of the required new listings. Also notice the number of usage of these items in job profiles.

How to set up the Announcements in Workday?

Announcements

You can notice Announcements on your home page and they are different for each employee based on the configurations. Understand that this is part of your Home (Landing Page) Dashboard, which is configurable.

Access the Configure Announcements task and identify the Home Dashboard to configure.

Notice the Rule column, this can be setup with the task Create Announcement Rule. Based on the rule you condition, it will show up the group of employees if they satisfy the condition. 

Also up on expiration date, it will not show up to view on the page. 

Also you can use the Edit Dashboard (Home)task to control all your announcements.

Compare Workers / Compare Team

Compare Workers

Use the standard report Compare Workers to compare workers in the tenant. This helps in finding more than one employee's information at the same time side by side and take an informed decision. This allows you to compare a Contingent Worker along with the Worker.

Also there is another standard report by the name - Compare Team which helps in comparing the Workers in a given team.  This won't let you compare your workers along with the Contingent Workers.

Use the Report - Compare Talent by Organization to identify the right talent.

Packaged Connectors - Special Character Translations

Perform Character Translation

There are chances where your end-point would not be expecting any special characters in the output file that you send to them. When you are working on a Packaged Connector / Core Connector look out for the Integration attribute - Perform Character Translation, and check the check box, which will automatically take care of the translations in your file.

Any of the below special characters you may typically see from Name or an Address field.

Special Characters: 'àâäèéêëîïôœùûüÿÀÁÂÄÈÉÊËÎÏÔŒÙÛÜŸçÇáéíóúÁÉÍÓÚäöüÄÖÜßàèéìòóùÀÈÉÌÒÓÙáéíóúüÁÉÍÓÚÜñÑ¿¡
Translated Characters: aaaeeeeiioeuuuYAAAAEEEEIIOEUUUYCCaeiouAEIOUaouAOUBaeeioouAEEIOOUaeiouuAEIOUUnN?1

Navigation: Go to your Integration >> Related Actions >> Integration System >> Configure Integration Attributes

How to Test your Workday Integration Connection / Delivery Method?

Test Transport

Its always a good practice to test your transport (Delivery) before Launching the integration, this way you know whether your credentials say SFTP / FTP related are working fine or not. This can be for any type of integrations. 

If there is any challenges in the details that you had setup in the delivery method of your integrations you can always reconfirm with your end-point and fix it.

Here is an example of one Integration System as how to navigate and test.

Navigation: Go to your Integration System >> Related Actions >> Integration >> Test Transport

Pick up the required action that you want to perform during the test. Here you can see the selection Connect.

Once you click OK in above screen it tests the delivery method and gives you the response, it could be Completed or it may error if it could not connect.

Tip - Re Launch EIB or Core Connector or Studio Integration

Re-Launch Integration Event

While you launch your integration depending on the type say it EIB or a Core Connector, many a times you may need to provide the required / optional Launch Parameters. For one time it will be fine but during the testing you may want to repeatedly run your Integration with same or a different parameters. In that cases, instead of just launching the integration you may use the Relaunch Integration Event. 

This will populate the same integration event related parameters which you used in the last run. According to your need, you may change and quickly launch it.

So make use of Relaunch Integration to launch your integration to auto fill your launch parameters.

Access the task Integration Events and key in your integration name and hit enter to see the below screen. Go to the Integration Event related actions and then Relaunch Integration Event task. This will take you to the next screen.

Below shows the example of a Core Connector.

On this screen below, you can edit your launch Parameters according to your current need and Launch.

How to setup Required Worklets in the Tenant?

Maintain Dashboard - Home

Most of the people know how to set the Worklets / Applications on the Home Page. If not, you will see a Setting / gear icon on the home page which lets you configure what you want to see on the Worklets. You can set the Optional Worklets but the required Worklets on the left does not allow you to edit or change. 

You can edit those Required Worklets as what should be shown and to Whom.

Meanwhile, worklets are the easily accessible icons which we can say shortcuts for your tasks or reports or both of them grouped as a folder. What ever you see in the worklets can be searchable in the search bar.

Naviage to the task - Edit Tenant Setup - Worklets  and click on Maintain Dashboards. 

Or you can directly access the task - Maintain Dashboards.

Out of the listed Custom and Workday Delivered dashboards, search for Home and click on Edit.

Here it will take you to Content, which allows you to add or remove Worklets. Also notice the Required for Groups and Required checkbox which is making it mandate for those security group users. 

How to configure the Summary Page of Worker?

Configure Profile Summary

Different companies would like to show up different summarized sections on the Worker's profile. Navigation: Go to Worker's Profile >> Summary

Workday allows you to configure Summary through the task - Configure Profile Summary.

As shown below are the available profiles that you can configure the summary for. Most of them that you notice here are for Recruiting, and Student related.

Once you select the desired profile, you have the choice of selection as which cards / sections you wanted to show up on your Worker's profile and their order.

How to Enable or Disable certain fields in Workday based on Region?

Maintain Localization Settings

Workday allows you to setup certain fields based on Locale i.e. Country. Access the Task - Maintain Localization Settings. As you notice only in certain Areas at the moment.

As you see down below the only allowed areas as of today are:

Contact Information, Internal Candidate Compensation, Staffing, Personal Information, Period Activity Hours.

Select the area to configure. In this example lets take Personal Information. You can not Add or Remove the fields with in any Area.

Notice the fields below:

Localized Field - The field that you want to control.

Allow for Countries or Regions - If not selected, applies to all Countries. If selected applies to only selected.

Active - If selected then it is Applicable and active in Tenant.

Require for Countries - If you mandate for certain countries, populate those.

Enforce Required in Web Services - With in Web Services the localized field will be a required ones

Task: Maintain Localization Settings

How to set up Termination Categories in Workday Core HCM?

Termination Categories

When you are performing a termination transaction or an End Worker Contract for an Employee / Worker in Workday, you will see the Termination Category and Sub Category. Have you ever wondered where these can be maintained? If so it is with the help of task Maintain Termination Categories.

Example: Termination Category        - Voluntary

                Termination Sub-Category - Career Move

Go to the task Maintain Termination Categories, notice couple of Termination Events, you will see End Contingent Worker Contract / Terminate Employee. Depending on your need, you can go ahead and configure it on the next screen.

Here on this screen by clicking on add button you may add a new reason or you can edit the existing ones. Notice the other fields that you see on the same screen that you can maintain like Eligible for Rehire, Inactive, usage etc.,

Access the report Termination Categories

You have a report to see what are the existing values. 

How do I find appropriate fields for creating Workday condition rules?

Fields for creating Condition Rules

While creating condition rules say for example in Business Processes, if a field that you are looking for is not available or it in one of the other related Business Objects,  then you can create your own calculate fields and bring it up to the Action Event Level. 

Remember that you Business Process is related to the action event. Also you can notice all the available fields and conditions that you can use in a particular BP.

Lets take an example of Termination BP - You can see a tab "Available Rules & Fields". Search here for the fields that you are looking for while creating the conditions. 

Also check  Workday Data Dictionary report to determine what fields are available for each business object.

How to handle unassigned Tasks in Business Processes?

Unassigned Tasks 

I know a lot of new Workday Enthusiasts struggle in fixing the Unassigned Tasks in the Business process that you typically see in the inbox.

An unassigned task is one for which the specified security group does not contain a user, or contains only users with disabled Workday accounts.

Here is an example of identifying one such Business Processes and fixing the same. Lets say we want to identify the hire processes that were hanging around in the Unassigned state.

Access the report Unassigned Tasks.   

Business Process Administrators can reassign unassigned tasks to workers in the required security group. Workday sends a notification email to members of all security groups with View and Modify permissions to the Business Process Administration domain when a task becomes unassigned. 

Provide the specific BP or select For all Business processes radio button to view all BP's per your need and most necessarily provide the date range to fetch you the results in a specific time line.

In our case we can see two Hire BP's that do not have any workers to assign.

Navigate to the related actions of the BP Event, then Reassign Unassigned Task.

Then on the next screen, give the user that you want this task to be reassigned to.

That marks the completion of reassignment of an unassigned Task.

Root cause for the Unassigned Tasks in BP mostly be the Unassigned roles in the Supervisory Organization or User account disabled, or expired or locked.

Integration Common Issues in PROD

 Integration Common Issues in Production

Here are some of the common Issues related to files that you would encounter while supporting any type of integrations in Production. 

For example, an ongoing EIB Outbound integration, you would typically see issues like below:

File Empty:

The file that was sent to the end point is empty where as they were expecting some data in the file. You need to check your Data Source and specially parameters / filters on your integration event. Which parameters were passed during the launch of integration. Check for the data parameters, and try to run your report by passing the same parameters and see if you fetch any rows.

File Not Received:

In the above case, the file was sent but if was empty. Here, the file was not received at the end point. This is most probably something to do with your Delivery method. Check if the SFTP / FTP passwords got changed or any address / directory got changed so that you can update it and relaunch the integration.

File Has Incorrect Data:

In this scenario, the file was sent and the data in the file was not as expected. It could be of two scenarios 

1. More rows than expected 

2. Less rows than expected.

Its not always the fault on our side, there are times when your end point had a different understanding. So it is important to analyze the data as what was sent vs what is expected. You need to know your data source or web service and filters, sub filters properly. 

Example: If your file is missing some employees, you can ask for the sample Employees who are being missed and try to analyze what is causing that employees to miss in the output file. Same goes with the additional employees in the file.

Workday Data Centers

Data Centers [Check Update Below]

There are 5 different data centers for Workday. Below is the list.

1. Ashburn
2. Dublin
3. Portland
4. AWS Columbus
5. AWS Montreal

Below shown are the sample URLs as how you login to the prod and non-prod Workday Tenants

Non-Production:          impl.workday.com

Production        :         www.myworkday.com

To check which data center you customer / organization is at, you can verify by logging into Workday Community or Workday Customer Center or Using Your Tenant URL Prefix.

Via Workday Community: 

1. Click your profile image and select View Profile.
2. Click your Organization (Company) name.
3. View the Production / Non- Production Data Center value.

Here is the 30 Days View for one of the Workday Data Center

24 hour View of one of the Workday Data Center

 

This shows 4 statuses:

• Available
• Maintenance
• Degraded
• Disruption

This provides details of upcoming scheduled maintenance, Historical view of the past 24 hours or past 30 days.

---

UPDATE:

WD1 - US Region

WD3 - EU Region

WD5 - US Region

WD10 - AWS ca-central-1

WD12 - AWS us-east-2

WD102 - AWS ap-southeast-1

WD103 - AWS eu-central-1

WD104 - AWS us-east-2

WD105 - AWS ap-southeast-2

Below are the URL prefixes you can make out based on the tenant you are logged in.

Workday Schedules ( Service Updates )

Feature Releases 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, 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 - 21 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

Previous Version - Workday 2020 Release 1

February 1,  2020 - Features available for Preview

March      7,  2020 - 2020R1 available in all tenants

Previous Version - Workday 2020 Release 2

August        8,  2020 - Features available for Preview

September 12,  2020 - 2020R2 available in all tenants

Upcoming Version - Workday 2021 Release 1

February 6,  2021 - Features available for Preview

March    13,  2021 - 2021R1 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 environments.

My First Post

Workday! 

Hello there, This is my First Blog post ever. My love towards Workday made me create this blog #loveforworkday. 

I want to share my learnings and thoughts on Workday as a Workday Consultant which I feel would be helpful at some point for someone like you.

I will try to post one concept (or) a topic (or) a thought (or) learning each day on Workday Core HCM modules and Workday Integrations which would help the budding enthusiasts. This blog would give you a starting point to learn Workday and get familiar. I will be using all the screenshots or sample data from Training Tenants - GMS.

Please leave your feedback for continuous improvements.

-pb