Custom Report Type: Simple

Simple Reports

Simple Reports are the first type of Custom Reports. To Learn reporting, start here. This is a report if you want to extract data with one Business Object (BO), and with simple filters and sorting.

I am providing here with the screens as how to create a simple report.

Search for the Task Create Custom Report

Provide the Report Name, and Select the Report Type : Simple and importantly select the Data source.
Here we are taking a data source All Active and Terminated Workers from Worker Business Object.

Notice the details of Primary Business Object which gets derived from your Data Source.

Select the columns / fields that you want to see in the final output. Fields in Workday are called as CRF (Class Report Fields)

You can do the Sorting of your report data with any of your report fields (or) any of the fields which are not on Report but related to Worker BO. Sorting is Optional.

In Filter, you can set the criteria to set restrict the data with some conditions. In the below example, we have Age > 0 and Base Pay > 0. So this will restrict if there are any 0 or negative values.

This is how your Report definition shows when you complete your work.

You have 3 options - Run, Test, Done.
Run - Will return all report results
Test - Will return 10 random report results
Done - Its more or less same as Run. 

Here is the sample Report results: Notice multiple option on the right of the report - In order -

Tag, Download to Excel, Worksheets, Filter, Charts, Field Alignment, Toggle Full Screen.

Additional Reads:
Workday Custom Reports
Workday Standard Reports

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